SOLILOQUIES 

OP A 

HERMIT 



THBODORB 
FRANCIS 

powys 



SOLILOQUIES OF A HERMIT 



PEACE OF MIND 

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SOLILOQUIES 
OF A HERMIT 

BY 
THEODORE FRANCIS POWYS 



LONDON : ANDREW MELROSE LTD. 

3 YORK STREET, Covent Garden, W.C. 2 
1918 



SOLILOQUIES OF A 
HERMIT 

**He that acknowledgeth the Son, hath 
the Father also,'' 

AM I a fool ? Is not a fool the best 
title for a good priest ? And I 
am a good priest. Though not of the 
Church, I am of the Church. Though 
not of the faith, I am of the faith. 
Though not of the fold, I am of the 
fold ; a priest in the cloud of God, 
beside the Altar of Stone. Near beside 
me is a flock of real sheep ; above me 
a cloud of misty white embraces the 
noonday light of the Altar. I am 
without a belief ; — a belief is too easy 
a road to God. 

A priest has his roots in the deep 



SOLILOQUIES 

darkness of human desires ; his place is 
beside the Altar, held to the earth by- 
twisted roots ; the priest gives to man 
whom he cannot love, and loves God 
whom he cannot know. The priest 
points ever to Christ, and tells the 
people to love Him ; but to love one 
another kt does not tell them. How 
can he ? The Master alone can com- 
mand the impossible ; Christ, who 
knows only Himself, He can say, 
"Love one another." The priest can 
only say, "Love Christ.'* He knows 
that the people can never love one 
another, and that if they could love 
one another, there would be no need 
for them to love Christ. 

And I, the priest, will tell the story. 
I know how men move under the shadow 
of the moods of God, and I know how 
I move. Some try to hide in the Gar- 
den, and some try to hide in the beast's 
belly. I have tried to hide amongst 
grassy hills ; but the moods of God have 



OF A HERMIT 

hunted me out. The proper place for 
a priest is in -a cave, a narrow cave 
where he lies with his back against a 
sharp rock. As I could not hide from 
God, I tried to hide from myself, and 
watch the moods as they passed by. 
To believe in God and not to believe 
in yourself, is the first duty of a priest. 
There is no need to fulfil a mood ; you 
get far more of the truth of a mood if 
you do not fulfil it, and a mood is often 
good and kindly to you if you let it 
enter without your doing anything that 
it moves you to do. A priest is always 
a priest, on a throne ; or if upon the 
gallows, he is still a priest. A priest is 
a man who knows the workings of the 
moods of God. 

The common man, the happy man, 
the working man, the immortal man, 
is dominated by one mood, so that he 
never feels God but in one way, and 
whatever condition he may be in, this 
3 



SOLILOQUIES 

one mood holds him up. This kind of 
man is everywhere ; he is the people ; 
he talks about " having a drink," " get- 
ting on in the world," "writing books," 
" buying stocks and shares," " driving 
pigs to market," "sowing red wheat." 
He may be in a palace, or at the bottom 
of a coal mine, or in a clover field, or 
in a villa at Chiswick ; he is the people, 
and his dominating mood is the getting 
mood. 

On the other side of the road is the 
priest. He is vulnerable, he is mortal ; 
this life is his only life, he is not im- 
mortal like the other man ; the only 
immortality that he gets is by believing 
that he is immortal ; his children are 
not his children, and his life is not his 
life, it is God's. He is the soil in which 
God practises His divine moods ; His 
hating moods, His loving moods. His 
cruel moods. The other man is domi- 
nated by one mood all his life ; the 
manner of his life never changes, he 
4 



OF A HERMIT 

moves in one small circle. The priest 
is never under one mood for long ; he is 
always breaking, or rather being broken, 
by God. God takes him up and casts 
him down, and pitches him from one 
mood into another, taking care that no 
mood lasts that the priest can live and 
feed upon. The priest prays ; he tames 
the moods by prayer, and he tries to 
shut up the bad moods, the good moods, 
all the moods, in the Bible ; and then 
he tries to hide the Bible in the Church. 
And he prays all through the bad moods, 
even when they bite him (and moods 
can bite), and he waits and prays till a 
gentle mood comes like a dove from 
heaven ; then he rejoices and quietly 
eats his bread like any other man. 

I am writing about myself. I am the 
priest that I talk about. When I speak 
about the priest or anything about the 
priest, I mean myself I was never put 
into the fold, and I never climbed over 
5 



SOLILOQUIES 

the wall ; I never knew Latin ; I have 
never spoken to a Bishop, or helped a 
Dean to put on his gaiters ; I have never 
tried to convert any young lady in the 
street. I am speaking of Religion in a 
book ; — that is not allowed, but what 
else can I write about ? It is the only 
subject I know anything about. 

At the same time there are things 
that interest me, and things that I love. 
I love a broken chair that is worn 
through to the wood ; it is a chair that 
can tell its own tale ; I have a terror of 
anything that is sound and whole. I 
love a broken roller left in a field ; my 
little boys come with me up a little hill 
and play by it ; it is left in a field that 
belongs to a crippled farmer, a weakly 
tottering old man, crooked and bent ; 
all his farm tools are broken and tied 
up with string, and the roller is the 
most broken, and that is why we love 
it the best. It is much better, I have 
found, to love a chair than to love a 
6 



OF A HERMIT 

person ; there is often more of God in 
a chair, and God often rests by the 
side of the old roller and watches my 
little boys play and the old farmer at 
plough. 

The moods pass over me and I must 
act after their ruling. I hate when 
they hate, I love when they love. The 
wonderful moods carry me on, and do 
with me what they will. When an evil 
day comes, it is the mood from above 
that is evil ; when the earth and sky 
and my heart are bathed in sunbeams, 
God is in a shining mood above. The 
moods carry me away in the night and 
they leap upon me in the day, and 
they hold me down in the evening, or 
perhaps let me wander a little way 
under the stars. 

I have voted twice at the elections, 
once for a conservative and once for a 
liberal ; at each election I voted ac- 
cording to the mood that I was in, as 
7 



SOLILOQUIES 

everyone ought to. Just now I wear 
a badge of an order of Socialism, and 
when one day I broke my spade in 
trying to lift up a dead cherry-tree in 
the garden, I looked at my badge and 
wondered what it meant by having an 
arrow, the sun and the world upon it. 
And then I thought of the people ; I 
know a little about the people, the 
people that slave and toil and tear at 
each other with the claws of the beast, 
and the beast has sharp claws. I know 
their ways and how they steal the moods 
of God ; they will not allow the moods 
of God to pass freely through them 
and go. 

Once I said, " I love poor men." 
And I believed that they were true, 
noble, simple, and kind, and of all men, 
I loved most the men in the fields ; I 
thought that the gentle life they led in 
the country gave their minds the colour 
of deep grey waters. I thought that 
poor people dwelt so near the mud that 
8 



OF A HERMIT 

they were always clean ; I thought that 
only spoilt children were cruel and ugly, 
and that all the poetry of the world 
came from the cottage. 

It is the priest's duty to dig in the 
clay through which the moods of God 
pass ; he must foretell how the clay 
pieces will behave when the mystic 
winds that they cannot see blow them. 
It is well that he preaches of one that 
will take away the sins of the world ; 
but if that One would take the good- 
ness of the world, too, he would find 
the load almost as hard to bear ; for 
the good man often hides beneath his 
goodness an ugly little devil that spits 
out fire. 

Man is a collection of atoms through 
which pass the moods of God — a ter- 
rible clay picture, tragic, frail, drunken, 
but always deep rooted in the earth, 
always with claws holding on to his 
life while the moods pass over him 
9 



SOLILOQUIES 

and change his face and his life every 
moment. The people of the earth are 
clay pieces that the moods of God 
kindle into life. 

To the priest every man is a rough 
soil that the moods of God pass through, 
and the priest knows that every man 
will clutch what he can hold like a 
babe, and he knows that where the 
moods of God are, strange things will 
happen. He knows that the world is 
a wild mad world, a world that cannot 
settle into peace, that cannot quietly 
tend its garden and plant the herbs of 
the field. In the moods, in my moods, 
there are great and terrible happenings. 
In the most quiet places the moods of 
God rend and tear the heart. Every 
mood that passes through me is terrible, 
the most peaceful happy mood carries 
the heartache beneath it. 

In looking at my life, as indeed in 
looking at anyone's life, I see the desire 
to do something so that the moods may 

10 



OF A HERMIT 

pass and the man still live. And I 
think that I can also understand the 
idea of the monk in a cell, or the her- 
mit in a wood, for these allow the 
moods freely to pass through them, in 
order that they may catch God in His 
own thought. In the common longing 
to do something — I will not say to 
work, I see the desire to escape from 
God. When I want to go out and 
work or even to help my neighbour, 
my reason is that I want to hide myself 
from the moods. I have never been 
idle — no priest ever is ; my sin has 
been that I have sought to do some- 
thing ; not that I have worked — of 
course there comes to the hand of every- 
one something of the common burden 
— but when I have sought work, it has 
been as a means of escape, of escape 
from the moods of God. There is only 
one way of escape and that is in prayer. 
I will call it the monk's way ; only the 
monk's way is no use to him from 
II 



SOLILOQUIES 

whom God hides deep down at the 
bottom of His moods. 



All human laws are made to trap 
and snare God's movements ; men are 
always trying to get at ease with them- 
selves and away from His terrible ways. 
The priest learns the hard law of men, 
and he feels the terrible presence of 
God ; from men he is given poverty 
and scorn, and frora God, death. He 
forgives men, and he takes God's gift, 
that is to him God's best gift ; he trains 
himself to become as clay in the hand 
of the potter ; to take the mood and the 
day and the chance as it opens out to 
him ; to walk the road that is nearest 
before him and to keep always to the 
left-hand side of the way ; to accept as 
they choose to come, the anger, the 
fretfulness, the joy, the hunger ; for 
each is a sign, if it be not the reality, 
of the moods of God. I have learned 
to know that though I cannot touch 

12 



OF A HERMIT 

the power, the power can touch me ; 
that is as far as I dare probe into the 
mystery. I am not evil nor good ; I 
am just my own clay through which the 
moods of God pass, and this is exactly 
the case with my brothers, and with 
everyone else ; no one is good or evil, 
we are all just our own clay. 

When I look at myself before a glass 
I am not pleased ; I fear I cannot look 
into the glass and say to myself, " What 
a fine fellow ! " I wish I could. All the 
same I am willing to put up with my- 
self ; I am not yet tired of the sun ; I 
like still to feel the movement of being, 
and to know that another spring has 
come ; I love myself enough to love 
the world. 

I have discovered that all movement 

is a begetting and creating, and that 

when I Only move my feet I bring to 

birth new wonders. We cannot over- 

13 



SOLILOQUIES 

rate too much mere existence. Simply 
to be set dancing by the sun is some- 
thing. I love to preach, but the only 
person I ever preach to is myself, be- 
cause I am the only person that I have 
ever met who knows how to attend to 
a sermon. I preach to myself, and I 
am interested to get to the bottom of 
my sins. I find my sins are deep 
enough to be interesting. I love to 
hate, to desire, to envy, to bear malice 
in my heart. I am glad that I have 
these feelings ; I do not want to love 
my neighbour. I prefer mildly to hate 
him. When the mood of gentle toler- 
ance comes to me I take it and love 
even God. 

I have not fallen into my worst sin. 
My greatest temptation has always been 
to work, to go with other men into 
the great labour market of the world, 
and be given my place. The priest is 
lower than the lowest labourer, and if 
14 



OF A HERMIT 

he can only find men and no God in 
the earth, woe be to him, he will 
certainly find himself betrayed. 

Once I thought I was wise, wiser 
than the wise men of old. " It was not 
for me," I said, " to come out from 
the same door wherein I went." It is 
well to break your head against all the 
walls that you can, while you are 
young, so that when you grow old you 
can slay yourself quietly in your own 
garden. 

I wonder what to most men is the 
pleasantest thing they do. I know that 
I am happiest when I am mending my 
garden railings ; they are very old and 
very much out of repair ; every labourer 
that has come past for the last ten years 
has had something rude to say about 
them ; and if they see me in the garden 
they stop and advise me to have iron 
railings ; and once a young sheep dealer 
told me I ought to build a wall. But, 
J5 



SOLILOQUIES 

alas, I am no lover of walls that keep 
out the sunshine, and I have a vast 
hatred for iron railings, and why should 
I not continue my happiness by mend- 
ing my wooden ones with string ? But 
people do not like my way. And if 
the Parish Council had the power, it 
would no doubt compel me either to 
sell my cottage or to buy iron railings. 
If no one drank any beer, if all were 
self-respecting, if all wore badges with 
a "world and an arrow," if everyone 
went to Chapel, then would they force 
me to mend my railings with iron nails 
and barbed wire. 

If George v. were not king, if the 
people ruled, if these lovers of iron 
railings and brick walls had the power, 
there would be no life for me or any 
lover of string upon the earth. I 
wonder whether if in America a disciple 
of the god Pan is allowed to mend his 
garden railings with string, or is he 
badgered to use nails ? One day it will 
16 



OF A HERMIT 

happen that everyone will be forced to 
live exactly as his dullest neighbour 
wishes him to, and we shall be com- 
pelled to eat meat every day and to earn 
the money to pay for it. An iron- 
hearted world it is indeed, and in some 
places even the daisies are made of 
nail heads, so new that they shine quite 
like real daisies. I pray that I may 
always be allowed to keep my blood 
cool by watching the cows and by 
moving brown earth under the sun. 
Must everyone here on earth be either 
ordering or obeying, stealing or giving, 
blessing or cursing ? 

The kind of people that I find most 
unpleasant to my taste, are the people 
that look and smile and walk on. These 
are they that find fault, — the fault- 
finders, the people that point at your 
thistles and count your nettles, that 
wonder why you do not keep fowls, 
or why you keep a row of five broken 
B 17 



SOLILOQUIES 

buckets by your back door. These 
are the people who think that to work 
is to worship, and who talk about 
nothing else than what they can do, 
and what you cannot do. I lack their 
ardour ; they say they keep the world 
growing, but it is more likely that they 
keep the world sinning. 

It is now spring, with a dull mist and 
rain coming over the hills, and a wind 
that howls like December in the chim- 
ney, and in the spring what memories 
come to us who look backward ; to us 
who prefer not to look forward. The 
memories of spring, — that every spring 
revives, and every autumn kills, and 
every winter buries ! I know the joy 
of looking backward, — and the tears, — 
in order to find again the sun that once 
shone ; and when found I can take and 
eat the true joy now that I was not able 
to take then. I can now pick up the 
wind flowers that I missed by being too 
i8 



OF A HERMIT 

eager for them. Only the same kind of 
day must come in order that I may be 
able to remember the past, and I must 
have the same kind of feelings that I 
had on that same day ; the same old 
crippled man must hobble past ; the 
same wind must howl in the chimney ; 
the same white cow must chew the cud 
by my gate ; and then I remember. 
And often it is something ugly that 
brings me to this happiness. I have 
never had the least objection to ugly 
things. If my fire warms me, what do 
I care if the grate is a square black 
hole in the wall, with three varnished 
iron sunflowers in a row above it ? 

I like things beautiful to keep at a 
distance, and even art can very well 
keep shut up in a book. It is a worry 
to me to have too precious works near 
by. I can look at good things too 
much ; it is better to have a certain 
cheapness of ordinary and common 
19 



SOLILOQUIES 

things about, that one need never 
look at. 

No labour has made the delicate 
visions that come to me from the past, 
and require only the same kind of day 
to awaken ; no hard chisel formed the 
look of affection that I saw once in the 
eyes of a sick man ; no brush can show 
me the first celandine lying in the dust 
of the road, thrown down by a tiny 
child, though a brush may be able to 
show me one, smiling gaily, almost too 
gaily, from a bank of canvas. Ah, but 
to him that painted the picture these 
are memories ; all the money in the 
world cannot buy them. 

I have found a use for every one of 
the moods that pass through me. There 
is one of depression that is common to 
all rhen, and I compel this mood to 
carry me down to the earth and even 
below the earth, so that it may give me 
peace. When I speak of God, I mean 

20 



OF A HERMIT 

the mystic fear that I share in common 
with all men, who do not give their 
lives utterly up into the claws of 
Mammon. 

When I began to write this — shall I 
say tract ? — I spoke of myself as a priest 
without a God ; but it is quite impos- 
sible to be a priest at all without the 
mystic fear showing itself somewhere, 
showing itself perhaps in the way I 
walk down the road, or put on my 
overcoat, shall I say ? The fear of God, 
calm, persistent, triumphant, must show 
itself to the priest at last. It is impos- 
sible to ignore it ; it is in life, it has to 
open a way for itself although we may 
try to bar it out. " I went down into 
Hell and behold he was there." It is 
futile to try to go gaily along for ever 
and chat and smoke cigarettes, and talk 
about the pleasure of the spring, or 
about a young lady who lives on the 
other side of the valley and is no better 

21 



SOLILOQUIES 

than she should be. The fear of God 
is sure to break in upon you ; the very 
winds bring it ; it comes out of the 
stones ; I dig it up in the garden ; I 
hear it in the sound of a train far off ; 
there is fear in the sound of a train. 
I see it moving in the flight of a bird ; 
I cannot escape it. No one can save 
himself from the Fear by work ; you 
must stop somewhere, and the Fear 
can wait for you outside the door, — 
he has plenty of time. I have always 
lived near great empty spaces, great 
empty fields and huge solitary downs ; 
often I walk miles without meeting 
anyone, and the moods that come to 
me are often as empty and void as the 
hills around ; and the very emptiness 
is dreadful. No wonder that honest 
labourers crowd to the taverns ; no 
wonder the priest likes to have his 
church full of human flesh and blood 
rather than to be alone with the fear 
of God. 

22 



OF A HERMIT 

I love light. I love to light the lamp 
on a winter's evening when the sun sets 
red in a mist behind our low hills, for 
in the summer the sun climbs up our 
highest hill. I like to light a fire, and 
to smell the smoke of burning wood 
and to feel the first warmth that comes 
when the sticks burn. I love the sun ; 
and if I were to worship an Idol, I 
would certainly worship a star ; and 
when I dig in the garden I like to turn 
my face to the sun. For the moon I 
have no love, except for the child with 
torn long hair that runs over his face 
when he is full, and was discovered by 
one of my brothers ; no doubt she is 
always fleeing from the horrible old 
man with the sticks. There lived just 
such an old man in our village. 

I take my life as I find it, and live it 
to myself as everyone does. As I am a 
priest, I never give anything away ; it 
is a natural law of my nature not to 
give, but always to receive. I once 
23 



SOLILOQUIES 

asked a tramp why he did not beg of 
me for anything, and I inquired of him 
whether I looked a mean fellow, or if 
I looked as if I had not anything to 
give away. He said he did not know 
why he had not asked, but that some- 
how he knew that I was not the kind 
of gentleman to beg from ; he also added 
as he went on, " The woman behind me 
will ask you," and so she did, but got 
nothing. 

Looking backward, looking forward, 
looking around me in search of my 
greatest pleasure next to mending my 
railings, I can say without lying that 
I find it in reading a good book. I do 
not know any good thing that is so 
good as this. But I must have a book 
to my mind. I do not object to any 
kind of story, — to travel, to pig-sticking 
even ; but it must be something with a 
soul. If it be a story, let it have a touch 
of human blood about it ; what I want 
24 



OF A HERMIT 

is a real mind's battleground, with 
sweat and agony. I like an author 
who has seen — who Jhas lived, what he 
is writing about ; I hate a book that 
tells only half the man does and in- 
vents the other half: I like the whole 
man in his work, — his body, his hands 
and his eyes, and even his belly. And 
I like best to read of actual moving, 
working life ; of ships as Conrad writes 
of them, or anything else that has a 
real touch of moving, itching, speaking 
life about it. Let me have the whole 
body of the man as well as his brain 
in his book. 

A book that I love, and of all books 
the most intensely human, is Wesley's 
Journal. He is a worshipful priest of 
his hands, as Malory would have said ; 
he speaks with the fervour of God and 
rides with the fervour of the Devil. 
There are no cobwebs about his ser- 
mons even ; he let the winds of heaven 
into his life, the sly old heathen ! He 
25 



SOLILOQUIES 

was called, I suppose, as many bad 
names as ^ny person upon earth or in 
heaven. But how human he was ; how 
his human hatred and malice show up 
the man as a man, and not a pitiful 
humbug as most of us are ; and he 
could bring down his fist when he 
wished to. He was a bad husband, I 
know it ; but let any young lady with 
a white fur muff and neat ankles, who 
wants to marry a John — more John 
than Wesley — find out a little what 
manner of man he is, before she trips 
up to the altar beside him ; and if she 
is wise, she will turn back and find 
some sober bank-manager instead, whose 
name 'may very well be something else 
than John. John Bunyan would have 
called Wesley a cock of the right kind, 
but a wild cock, a cock that strayed, 
a cock that would ride without a wink 
sixty miles before breakfast, "with a 
driving rain in our faces," rather than 
listen to the gentle upbraidings of a 
26 



OF A HERMIT 

sober partner at home. And this other 
John who is the true saint — whereas 
Wesley is the sinner — this other John 
had ever that strange quaint love of 
all weak things ; he might well have 
been a Russian peasant ; a marvellously- 
loving man he must have been and very- 
tender too to all about him ; it would 
have been a hellish thing to have cast 
stones at this man's belief. The thing 
was life and death to him ; he could not 
defend it like John Wesley, who knew 
the little hidden ways of his Lord. 

Everyone treated Bunyan with kind- 
ness, with tolerance ; there must be 
some good in man. It is true that 
they put informers like black rooks 
into the trees, but they did not run 
mad bulls at his meetings, or drag his 
preachers through ponds. I suspect 
one had to be a brave man to take 
John Wesley into a corner and tell 
him quietly in his ear that one did not 
believe in a God. Some of the young 
27 



SOLILOQUIES 

gentlemen who broke in drunk to his 
meetings were sometimes pretty roughly- 
handled. 

Wesley's humour is always bubbling 
over, try as he might to keep it down. 
And how he loved to make the people 
fall and rave at his meetings ; and he 
went about afterwards counting them 
as though they were so many dead 
sheep. I would have walked miles to 
have heard him, and, by heaven, I 
would have tumbled over, too, if I 
could have done it. It is no small 
thing to be taken out of this careworn, 
weary, everyday life, and behold instead 
a vision of yourself as a damned sinner 
with the fire of Hell at your feet, and 
to roar out, feeling that the very devils 
had hold of you. And after all this, as 
they almost always did, to receive the 
pardon ; to hear the voice from above ; 
and to sleep in peace with the Grace 
of God upon your pillows. It was 
no small thing that Wesley could fill 
28 



OF A HERMIT 

thousands of death-beds with immortal 
longings and a certainty of salvation ; 
if they were all lies and cheating, they 
were certainly romantic lies and joyful 
madness ; and if death can be cheated 
of its sting, why, then, let us cheat it, if 
we can ! Wesley could give hope at 
the last, even if it were a mad hope ; 
and who of us has not said many times, 
" What must I do to be saved ? '' It is 
one of the most curious feelings that I 
know, this one of being on the side of 
God, on the safe side. Sometimes in 
my life I have been able to go a little 
towards this feeling, and to know what 
it is like ; to go just near enough to 
the door to want to get in, and to be 
made quite ill-tempered when my old 
doubts drove me away. 

Another book that sometimes pleases 
me, and I like the sober colour of its 
binding, is the Bible ; and what a book 
of blood and tears ! Think of all the 
human eyes that have read all this very 
29 



SOLILOQUIES 

Strange matter ; think of all the human 
hearts that have read terror and hope 
and death into these pages. This 
human element must make the book 
at least of interest to everyone. How 
it has eaten into the heart of man, how 
it has torn at his vitals and lashed him 
with his blood. How it utters the 
moods of God with a great and deep 
voice, crying, weeping, hating, and end- 
ing up in utter madness. The divine 
fear flows in great waves through its 
pages, drowning many that meet it 
there, and even a child sees something 
terrible about this book. It tells of 
men walking in dreams in the garden 
of God, singing and praying and telling 
Eastern tales under the moods of God. 
And how well it keeps to the earth 
and the things of the earth, the poetry 
of the belly of life. We can see the 
dark men wandering under the sun of 
the desert, walking in the cool of the 
evening, throwing a spear and shooting 
30 



OF A HERMIT 

with an arrow. It shows you a man 
breaking a hole in his own wall, as a 
sign from God ; — what a mood to be 
in ! Another eating honey out of the 
bones of a lion ; and at the end man 
comes to Christ, the human child, the 
child of the moods of God ; and then 
the Agony in the Garden. 

We all read our own life in this 
book, our beginning and our end. The 
world is a garden to us all at first, 
and thorns and nettles come only too 
quickly ; but we may find a good poet 
among the nettles, and perhaps a Ruth. 
Or it may be our destiny under some 
mood or other to marry a harlot, and 
when, as no doubt the Prophet did, we 
make her an honest woman, she will 
have plenty of time to preach to us 
of our own failings. 

It was not easy for man to bear the 
heavy weight of the moods without 
Christ, and He is welcomed by all the 
31 



SOLILOQUIES 

weak ones in the earth, and not without 
cause, for the end must be the agony 
in the garden that only very old sinners 
seem to escape. And how can the 
play be acted without the last scene ? 
It cannot be complete without the end. 
If man had been able to sneak into 
another life the Bible would never have 
been needed. The moods of Him 
above are too great and terrible to carry 
the soul of man with them, when they 
pass the dark waters. It is well that 
our end should be perfect and utter, and 
we know it is well. We poor mortals, 
— at least the weak ones amongst us, 
the others don't care, — we poor mortals 
play with the romance of another life 
as a babe would with a celluloid toy, 
and when the fire touches it, in a 
moment it is gone. 

Everything that we do and think 

under the moods is put into the Bible ; 

the Bible tells us all we can ever 

know about ourselves. In our lives 

32 



OF A HERMIT 

the Prophets sing wild songs ; Ruth 
lies down by Boaz ; David steals the 
cakes ; Mary washes Christ's feet with 
her hair ; and Samuel hews Agag to 
pieces before the Lord. All the 
cruelty, all the terror, all the poetry 
of the Bible is acted in our lives ; that 
is why it is the religious book that will 
live ; it is true, because it is true to life 
and true to man. We may well sorrow 
over the sorrows of our Lord, for one 
day the nails will be driven into our 
own hands. A little pain that we feel 
in our bodies may be the beginning of 
a fatal disease ; a thought that anchors 
in our minds may be the prelude to a 
fierce madness. We pass our days as 
gaily as we can, but the Bible is always 
near, and try how we may to escape, 
God will win. The book of our 
tragedy is in our doors, open it and know 
what we are and how we shall end. 

And our best books follow the same 
c 33 



SOLILOQUIES 

plan, and try to show the same sad 
story with a gay laugh. Shakespeare 
plays in the field of our follies with a 
light hand, and like the Bible he would 
show us our heart's blood held up by 
a gay fool in cap and bells ; only in 
Shakespeare, there is a great deal more 
of the love of the Devil than of the 
fear of God. Shakespeare took away 
the clouds of God and put the sunshine 
of his own head and pointed beard in 
their place. As a matter of fact all 
books tell the same tale, and advise 
men to look into all kinds of holes and 
corners for honey to make their lives 
sweet. 

If ever I wrote a book I would like 
to show that the continued touch of 
life gives us a joy that we may well try 
to understand, and in books this touch 
of life is what pleases me most. There 
is something in the spirit of these 
modern days that makes me feel that 
I am wasting time when I am reading, 
34 



OF A HERMIT 

and that "something'* must be the 
iron-eyed, restless, nail-making devil 
that tries to put petrol into every man's 
belly, and would turn the world into 
a scurvy heap of scurrying ants, all 
running every way inside large white 
eggs that move themselves, a great 
many times bigger than the little ants. 
And even I that live in the wilderness, 
sitting in my own hut between the 
hills that are now covered with yellow 
gorse flowers, — even I, with brown 
bread and tea upon the table, and my 
feet to the fire, — even I, sitting thus in 
the desert, feel the devil tugging at my 
coat and shouting in my ear that I 
ought to be doing something in order 
to help the nail-makers to iron over 
the whole world. It is terrible to 
think that the evil smell of modern oil 
has got to me, and that the vile working 
devils would even try to pump petrol 
into my soul. In heaven's name let 
those that make work into a god with 
35 



SOLILOQUIES 

a Brummagem name, take him out of 
my way ; I do not like that kind of 
god. 

Do not think, O reader, that I mean 
to revile the kind of work that I see 
pass my garden. I see an old cart 
trundling along filled with turnips, 
going about a mile an hour ; I see a 
rabbit-catcher half hidden in a rabbit 
hole, quietly wondering where to set 
his next snare, and turning at last his 
slow steps to the inn to exchange a 
rabbit for beer. No, it is the work 
that bites you that I hate — work with 
a foreman biting behind ; not the work 
of a ploughboy who has plenty of time 
to think of his dinner and to sing a 
song ; but the work that has no song 
in it at all, the work that is sheer, bare, 
vile toil. 

And let us all bless religion, for it 
can, like a pleasant timely illness, take 
men away from their cursed everlasting 
36 



OF A HERMIT 

toil. Where work is the most, religion 
is the least thing in the land. And 
religion, so the task-masters say, might 
very well do more harm than the 
drink, if it takes the line of least resist- 
ance. In their heart of hearts the task- 
masters fear the priest ; that is why 
they try so hard and succeed so well 
in making a false priest ; they do not 
mind the Lord God, but they do not 
like the Son of Man. I wonder if we 
shall ever understand that the world is 
not made for work but for Joy. And 
I who am trying to understand, why 
should not I be left in peace to eat 
and walk amongst the clean rain-swept 
hills and to try to get under the moods 
of God ? 

Come and take and eat this morning 
with me, a bowl of porridge with salt, 
bread crisped by the fire, tea, the virgin 
herb of the sun, and brown sugar, 
the sweetness of our Mother's breast. 
Shall we go out and slay a lamb of the 
37 



SOLILOQUIES 

flock if we have a mind to a feast ? 
Why should we not cut a throat or 
stick a pig, and cook it over a great 
fire ? But I prefer parched corn ; I 
prefer to grow sonnie genial honest sea- 
cabbage in my garden, or to transform 
some ugly worn bits of copper into 
shining white eggs. It is well to leave 
too many dinners alone, and too big 
feasts ; for if we eat a great many very 
large dinners, the dinners will most 
likely end by eating us. 

All praise be to Wine, but should 
not wine be kept for those selected 
moments when we meet the ones that 
we love, the children of our hearts ? 
I do not like always to see wine on 
the table ; it is often stale, and the 
decanter not overfull ; and there are 
often dregs that the unwary guest has 
to finish ; and worst of all the host 
wonders if there will be just enough. 
Throw such dregs to the pigs. When 
3B 



OF A HERMIT 

I take wine I like bottles, or better still 
a goodly hooped barrel in the cellar 
and the wine drawn in fantastic jugs. 
I like there to be around the table 
three or four companions, but no more 
than the number of the bottles, and 
no women. And there ought to be a 
ritual, a crowning of the cups ; cups 
of silver and gold ; a feast of wine is 
quite worth the trouble of reading the 
writing upon the wall. 

Sometimes, but alas only too seldom, 
comes to me out of the heavenly pres- 
ence the mood of loving Tolerance, 
that most gentle of the moods of God. 
It is then that I regard the world as a 
garden and the people as good children ; 
it is the mood in which everyone is 
forgiven ; it is the mood that makes 
me say to myself, " It is good for me 
to be here," and to say to other people, 
" It is good for you to be near me." 
It is a mood that would pick out of 
39 



SOLILOQUIES 

every man's life pearls, and see joy in 
every hardsRip. It is a mood that 
whispers joy to the sick man and tells 
him of the wonderful stillness of death. 
This mood is full of summer blessed- 
ness, of cool places amidst great and 
fair trees ; of rich banks of summer 
flowers ; of the noontide when the 
labourer lays him down to rest. Under 
this blessed mood the winds of heaven 
are still, and the mind of man is filled 
with peace, that is truly and really the 
Peace of God. Alas, this mood stays 
with me but a short time. 

I want to manage myself as well as 
I can, but it is not easy to manage 
myself when I am tired ; when I am 
tired I can do nothing else but walk 
up and down. At those times I am a 
great trouble, a great worry to myself; 
I do not obey the rules that I have set 
up to guide me ; I do not even obey 
myself. If I say, " Go out for a walk 
40 



OF A HERMIT 

in the rain," I do not go. If I order 
myself to write letters, I do not write 
them. It is no good. This kind of 
" being tired '' is a mood of despair, 
and when despair gets hold of you there 
is no escape till the ugly thing lets go. 
Perhaps it is possible for some to get 
good even out of this mood, for God 
hides His gold in queer places ; despair 
may be a kind of winter in the summer 
of your day. The sap has sunk like 
lead into your heels and you feel as 
though you could howl like a winter's 
wolf. This hopeless despair, by bring- 
ing you to the earth, raises you again ; 
it changes your blood, and drives you 
with vicious kicks forward into a new 
pasture. It makes a way for you out 
of your own misery, and creates a new 
mind out of your unrest : that — with 
a new beginning. But I can never 
escape, I can only wait until the mood 
lets go, and meanwhile the teeth of the 
mood bite me to the bone, and the 
41 



SOLILOQUIES 

black cruelty cuts at the very roots of 
my being ; and when it has hold of me 
I can do nothing ; I cannot even read 
The City of Dreadful Night. When I 
am like that I know there is nothing 
to be done — nothing. When I am 
like that I feel as if mind and body are 
hemmed in by black darkness, and that 
if I move I shall touch the jagged 
edges of a rusty knife, held in the claws 
of an ugly round-headed demon ; and 
so I wait and hope that this mood of 
God will not last long. 

When we were all of us quite natural 
beasts of the earth, we were able to 
take and enjoy the life near to us ; but 
being grown into men, we have got into 
the bad habit of looking forward, and 
by looking forward we quite lose the 
present. I want to take every moment 
as a fact in itself of special interest, 
and as a moment that belongs to me. 
Every moment that I have to spend 
42 



OF A HERMIT 

does belong to me, and the moments 
may be gold or dross as I choose to make 
them. Why should I let a moment pass 
me without taking it and finding a 
fairy food for my thought ? I like to 
have a plan [to fit the kind of day that 
I expect to come ; I like to know a 
little how I want to treat the day, be- 
fore I find out how the day will treat 
me. So that if I am bitten by one hour, 
I have got a muzzle ready for the next. 
And I like to remind myself very often 
that the day ends in sleep, and that 
sleep is a passing good thing for a man. 
To me by no means seldom comes the 
thought (that is, in truth, only the push 
of the old animal behind), that the day 
is wasted — I have done nothing ; and a 
good thing too if I have done nothing — 
the most pleasant and the most useful 
way that anyone can spend a day is to 
do nothing. 

May my pride help me, poor foolish 
43 



SOLILOQUIES 

mortal that I am, with my insane de- 
sire to do things ! Has not all this 
same sad day the breath of life passed 
into my lungs — is it then nothing to 
breathe ? And I have eaten and touched 
the fruits of the earth. How do I 
know that some God may not have 
rested beside me during my idleness, and 
His breath may have mingled with 
my breath, and His thought with my 
thought ? How can I tell that even in 
this sad day of nothing done, a wave of 
thought, beginning in a tiny ripple, may 
not have been conceived in me ? And, 
besides, what man, what king, what 
priest can do anything more than live ? 
It has taken long enough to make a 
man, and now a man sits in disgrace and 
hates himself because in one day he has 
done nothing. What after all are the 
very wonderful doings of man worth ? 
Very likely by doing nothing we may 
be going a little way on the right road, 
and by doing a great deal we may only 
44 



OF A HERMIT 

be going round the same old way 
again, the same old way that leads to 
common ugly rows of houses, munici- 
pal buildings, and petrol-filled machines. 
I, too, for a long while, have looked 
round this corner and that corner for 
God's secret, and at last I have dis- 
covered that I can do very well if I 
loiter through my life without knowing 
any secret at all ; and who can say 
that there is any secret to know ? It is 
quite clear, and quite proven, that men 
breathe when they are born and not 
when they die ; and there are other 
matters quite as clear to me. It is my 
wish to be an intelligent creature that 
has no desire to get more than just the 
plain grass and sun that are quite easy 
to get, and to wrap myself up in winter 
in a woollen blanket. The excitement 
of going out to pick up a few sticks is 
all the hunting that I want ; and all 
the gallantry that I want is sometimes 
to see in summer a little piece of pink 
45 



SOLILOQUIES 

or white on the side of a hill a mile or 
two away. I am easy to please and I 
never want to do anything that hurts 
anyone ; — why should I ? I should not 
like to see the blood of my neighbour if 
I dug at him with a knife. And why 
should I want to hurt anyone when 
I can enjoy reading Tristram Shandy ? 
The uttermost I can do is to try my 
best to hate. But I do not like to hate 
anyone that is too near ; there ought to 
be a good wide space between a man 
and his neighbour. 

It is my business to find out what I 
value in the world, and by no means 
to pay any regard to what other people 
value. Christian — Bunyan's pilgrim — 
all of a sudden, while he was walking in 
the fields, became aware that he was of 
value ; and it was then that he became 
for the first time in his life a really 
proud man, and a man who could walk 
his own way whatever Church and 
46 



OF A HERMIT 

State and family chose to say to him. 
I only require to believe in myself, and 
then everything that I do will be well 
done. No two people look even at the 
same daisies in the same way, and my 
way is the best way for me. I have 
the moments of my life to spend, I 
have myself, what more can I want ? 

In the old days I used to tie myself 
up in a mystic knot, that I never could 
undo ; neither could I ever explain what 
it meant. Now I leave all mystery to 
come and go with the moods. If a mood 
comes and therein is hidden a vision, 
I welcome it and believe ; for there 
is a mood in which God even believes 
in Himself, and in that mood He begets 
the belief of the world. And I am will- 
ing to believe, too, when it comes to me. 
I take and eat of the mystic fruit ; only 
when the fruit is taken away I do not 
pretend that I have it still. How often 
has my body been the home of carking 
care, and vile, dire forebodings, or silly 
47 



SOLILOQUIES 

ignorance, or turbid folly ! And I have 
had to live a long time before I was 
able to open my eyes and see myself. 

To have the soul and teeth of a lion 
and the body of a tramp, is the way to 
tread on this world as it ought to be 
trodden on. I know that I am an 
enemy to the people of the world as 
they are. I do not like the way they 
look at me. Why is it that when I am 
doing my work, the people of the world 
look at me as though I were doing 
something wrong ? " There he is again, 
digging in his garden.'' 

I suppose that I am the kind of per- 
son that whatever I do is a criminal 
offence. I must not even water my 
flowers, or walk down the road, or throw 
a stone at a rat, or read the paper in a 
corner under a little bush of May. 
No one ever likes to be understood ; 
perhaps that is why there is a jeering 
twinkle in the eyes of those that look 
48 



OF A HERMIT 

at me as I cut my grass. Perhaps the 
people think that I understand them. 
If they do think so, they are certainly 
to be excused for the way they look 
at me, but they are wrong. I do not 
pretend to understand them, for to 
understand the people would be to 
understand God, at least to understand 
what God ought never to be. 

To give too good heed to God's 
moods often gets a man shut up inside 
prison walls. That is why it is well 
to understand one's own mind, so that 
when we find a mood pulls us along a 
road to destruction, we can hold back 
a little before it is too late. I have 
never found that God plays at His 
moods. If He does jest at all, it is a 
very monstrous jest, and the sort of 
jest that does not appeal to me person- 
ally, though I like to read about it in 
the papers. 

I very much dislike people who are 
D 49 



SOLILOQUIES 

always the same ; for no man can be 
always the same unless he is so much 
of an animal that the moods pass over 
him like the clouds. 

I notice in this tract that I am now 
writing, that sometimes I appear to be 
an infidel and sometimes a believer, 
sometimes a Christian and sometimes a 
heathen, and every brave man is just 
the same as I am ; for no one but a 
coward hides his head in the sand when 
the mood that he is afraid to see goes 
by. If a man is sincere he will change 
his opinion with every mood, at least 
about the things that belong to the 
spirit. I do not change my ideas in 
some things, because God is a spirit, 
and though in the earth we have the 
Son of God to live with, God Him- 
self keeps always in the spirit of His 
moods. I change my mind most in 
what I believe ; but as a rule I do 
the same thing. I am always polite 
50 



OF A HERMIT 

to the world, and I try not to tell 
anyone when God's moods break in 
upon me ; or when a tongue of fire sud- 
denly devours all the thought that I love 
best ; this is what I expect to happen. 

But it is a little hard when God's 
moods shatter my belief in Him, though 
no mood of God can take away the 
love of Christ ; for that kind of love 
that Christ first planted is the only 
flower that can live under all the 
moods ; and so it is possible, nay de- 
sirable, for the greatest infidel upon 
earth to love Christ ; for in some 
curious way the Son of Man is in Earth 
and in Heaven, though this double life 
is rather obscure. However, His love 
has been felt by men even under the 
Garment of God, and in the darkest 
terrors of His moods ; and also I have 
felt it while I have been quite quietly 
picking buttercups with my two little 
boys in the fields. 



51 



SOLILOQUIES 

All priests ought to be trained as 
unbelievers, for unbelief is the only- 
good soil for the believing mood to 
grow in ; so long as unbelief is not 
fixed to that foolish idea that we are all 
so proud of, the idea, I mean, that we 
know the Truth. How, I should like 
to know, can I know the Truth when 
God Himself is always contradicting 
it ? If I say anything is true, then a 
mood comes and casts the thing called 
Truth to the winds, and my idea of 
God goes with it. If I say I believe 
only in matter, I have to be always 
proving it to myself in order to keep 
out the belief in God. 

That is why so many people are 
arguing whether one belief or another 
is true ; because each knows that if he 
does not keep it up, his side of the 
question will slip through his fingers. 
And a man is most unhappy when he 
has always to be fighting the mood of 
belief or unbelief, in order to keep the 
52 



OF A HERMIT 

one or the other simply because he 
happens to think that one or other of 
the ideas belongs to him ; it doesn't. 
Like all other ideas, it belongs to God. 
It is just man's conceit. He stands 
like a cock upon a dunghill and crows 
out his belief; or else he holds his 
watch in his hand and says, " Let God 
strike me dead, if he is a God, in ten 
minutes." And perhaps the next day 
this very man believes in God, for the 
mood of belief is upon him before he 
takes out his watch again to prove the 
contrary, and then he has to do all he 
can to pretend to himself that he does 
not believe. 

It is not for me to say how long the 
different moods are wont to stay ; every- 
one in this matter must judge for him- 
self. And it is no use crying out against 
the mood that hurts you ; it is better 
to go and dig in the garden. 

I can see, and so can any other who 
53 



SOLILOQUIES 

can think for himself, how good a thing 
it is that God lives in us in no fixed 
mood. If He did, it would render the 
Advent of Christ an impossibility. And 
how cruelly Christ was treated by the 
men who had fixed the moods by their 
law shows that if man could keep God 
out of his life, he would gladly do it ; 
just as he would like to keep out death, 
w;ar, plague, earthquake, love, wisdom, 
pity, or any other state that hurts his 
appetite, and prevents him from gather- 
ing together the things of this world, 
and from leaving them to his children. 
And it is easy to see how man, with 
his instinctive cunning, caught at the 
fixed belief in a distant God as some- 
thing tangible that would get this near 
God and His upsetting moods quite 
out of his life. Man thought — foolish 
fellow — that if he always held on to the 
tail of the bull it would not gore him, 
but this bull has not got a tail. 



54 



OF A HERMIT 

I am ashamed at the way we eat and 
drink and sleep as if none of these 
things concern us in the least. We 
take our dinner just as if it were no 
great matter, when every sitting down 
to meat should be a feast to the Lord. 
We cast our bread into the dust to the 
dogs, when we ought to hand it to them 
in silver dishes. Everything that we 
eat should be sacred to our palates. I 
like to make a wonder out of every 
little act, because every little act is a 
wonder. 

The simple life — so called — is not 
the simple life at all ; it is the deeper 
life. The simple life is the life of 
motor cars, of divorces, of monkey 
dances, of hunting cats and hares and 
foxes, of shooting people and playing 
games like ferrets. All these things 
are the natural, the simple life of a 
man. Anyone can get pleasure in 
these ways ; put a man on a horse, and 
55 



SOLILOQUIES 

a fox or a cat before him running away, 
and the man will be simple and happy. 
And the other pleasures are just as 
simple. 

The best joy is not got quite so easily. 
I want to cultivate the kind of mind 
that can turn stones into bread, a dull 
hour into heavenly glory, and a dull 
life into the life of a king. For what 
we call dullness is really the best soil 
we can dig in, because the gold that it 
yields is very precious and very lasting. 
I like to know that I am getting rich, 
not by stealing from the poor, but by 
getting something more out of myself ; 
I want to get all I can out of myself, 
and what I want to get is the thing 
that shall please me. 

The fact that it is hard to get any- 
thing out of oneself drives people to 
go and get what they can out of others. 
I do not blame them. I never blame 
anybody ; I never even blame myself. 
The light of my lamp gives light to the 
56 



OF A HERMIT 

moods of God that overshadow me as 
I write ; the air surrounds the moods 
when it surrounds me ; and the moods 
rest in me when I sleep. I try to 
deepen, to broaden, to open my life in 
every way ; to stand no more wondering 
how to be happy, but to see and feel 
and touch. I like to touch the waves 
of the sea and the mould in my garden ; 
I like to touch the heart of man ; I like 
to touch the grass and moss of the fields. 

It is only when I meet men that I 
am ashamed, and it is when I am 
ashamed that my love bites me, and I 
feel pain as though I had been bitten 
by an adder. Sometimes when I walk 
along the street of our little town and 
men pass me, and I see them talking 
to each other, I feel ashamed. There 
is something very ugly about the im- 
mortal part of a man, — his greed, his 
getting on, his self-sacrifice, his giving 
to the poor. I suppose there can be 
57 



SOLILOQUIES 

nothing beautiful in anything that has 
gone on a long while without changing ; 
it is only the ugly part of us that can 
live through so many generations of 
flesh and blood. I long for man to 
repent and to be saved from his im- 
mortality, so that I may not feel 
ashamed when I get into the road to 
let him pass on the pavement. 

At last, thank goodness, I have not 
the slightest value for my own opinion 
or for anything that I may say, or 
think, or write. I now take it for 
granted that I am nearly always as far 
from the Truth as Mr. Gladstone was, 
and I do not care if I am. I am not 
here to do right or wrong, or to teach 
anyone ; I am here to live. And at 
last I have found out where the 
pleasure of living hides ; I know now 
the moments that I have most enjoyed, 
and these moments may come again ; 
there is not one that may not come 
again, even in old age. 
58 



OF A HERMIT 

Youth is silly and selfish ; it is often 
miserable and foolish ; its good looks 
are stuffed with foolish feelings that are 
often as old as the world ; and its mind 
is narrow, — it is always thinking a 
thousand things too many about itself, 
when one thing would do. Youth has 
too many irons in the fire to be able 
really to live. It is best to have before 
you only two roads, This or That, this 
life as it is, or nothingness. 

I ^yill try to remember a few of the 
fairy hours that I have enjoyed most. 
I remember one evening in late autumn, 
when I walked with two very dear 
companions into the shining lights of 
a town, out of the dark country lanes. 
The first lamp that we passed might 
have been an immortal star. The first 
street, the first moving creature, an old 
woman carrying a bundle of gloves in 
a black cloth bag, — no sinner entering 
heaven could have had so much joy. 
59 



SOLILOQUIES 

The streets grew broader and the lamps 
brighter and the passers-by more gay, 
and the whole town was a fairy palace 
made for our delight, and we had only 
to walk about and enjoy it. 

And I remember under a white cliff, 
where the sand was too hot to touch 
and the sun's kiss kissed deep into my 
soul. With a dear friend I partook of 
a little bread and a tiny hard piece of 
cheese and a little bottle of lime-juice, 
and we parted it between us, and broke 
the bread with a priest's hands, and ate 
and drank as though we shared only 
one child's heart between us ; and after- 
wards we each smoked a cigarette that 
tasted of cool woods. 

And one other walk, that I hope in 
my last hour to remember ; it was in a 
cold February, and we walked far over 
the downs, over the white dead grass, 
dry and crisp in the wind ; and we 
rested a little and ate in a place where 
a little mound rose above the hill. 
60 



OF A HERMIT 

And we watched, in the valley beneath 
us, tiny children running to school 
beside a little blue trickle of water, 
and large gulls were washing and flap- 
ping their wings in the water. The 
children called to them and waved their 
arms, and the gulls rose and spread like 
snowflakes- over the valley, and the 
children ran on, holding each other's 
hands and singing. 

The cup I wish to drink is the cup 
of the earth's blood. I wish to drink 
deep of the silence, the deep mists, the 
growing corn, and the movements of 
birds. The very life that I feel around 
me should drug me, and each motion 
and movement and tongue of fire that 
I feel ought to pass like rich wine into 
my being. The very stones of the road 
should yield up to me their thoughts. 
And no doubt that was what Christ 
meant, when He spoke about the stones 
becoming men. To force upon our 
6i 



SOLILOQUIES 

wonderful bodies the drunkenness of 
prepared wine is to sour the imagina- 
tion and to prevent us from ever getting 
the delicious joy of real drunkenness. 

I try to be at peace with all my 
thoughts and to welcome even my anger 
when it breaks out upon me. I watch 
myself as if I were far away, as if I 
were a cloud passing in the sky, or a 
distant sheep feeding upon the hillside. 
I have yet to change a great deal before 
I can reach the goal of happiness. I 
still feel that I am in part immortal. 
I still find a curious pleasure in possess- 
ing a handful of bright gold coins. I 
still desire cunningly to defraud. And 
often, however much I disbelieve in 
my opinion, I think I am right. And 
feeling as I do the very movements of 
God, I do not like to be treated as a 
poor man who cannot afford a day 
labourer to dig his garden. 



62 



OF A HERMIT 

I suppose my class, the priest class, 
craves for love more than any other 
kind of human, as it feels itself sink- 
ing into extinction. I do not possess 
enough of the attributes of immortality, 
— greed, hardness of heart, cunning — 
all the biting instincts of the animal. 
I have them enough to pain, but not 
enough to save. I cannot help think- 
ing that the immortal man out of his 
abundance might give me a kindly look 
as he passes me in the road, a kindly 
look out of the body of hatred. This 
is my last priestly affliction ; I desire to 
be loved, and loved for nothing. This 
is my last foolish hope ; I want to be 
loved by men. 

Love is the last sadness of the priest, 
and men turn away from him because 
he tries to love them ; for have not the 
people that immortal hatred that is 
better than love ? 

My .wish is that I may understand 
63 



SOLILOQUIES 

myself. I know quite enough about 
other people ; they show me their ways 
only too clearly. I want to appear 
interesting in my own eyes ; I want to 
be something of value to myself I do 
not want to love. I want to study 
myself, because I am the nearest and 
most interesting creature that I know. 
I would like to be believed in, so that I 
might have some guide to the belief in 
myself. Left quite alone, my interest 
in myself is apt to dwindle. 

I like to be contented with myself in 
every way, and to mistrust everything 
that is not mine. I am sure that my 
sour grapes are not so very sour, nor 
are the sweet grapes of my neighbours 
so very sweet ; and it is indeed possible 
that all kinds of grapes have very much 
the same taste ; the best fruit can only 
give out so much sweetness and no 
more. 

With the terrible moods of God 
64 



OF A HERMIT 

moving about me, as dark clouds, and 
then the lightning, and sometimes the 
ominous silence and calm, I turn to the 
stranger upon earth that once learned 
to bear the burden of God, calling Him 
Father, and holding Him, as Atlas 
held the world, upon His shoulders. I 
turn to the stranger upon earth. He 
who was not afraid to call the terrible 
moods " Father," to take them into 
His life, to bear with them, to love 
them. And still more than that. He 
dared also to become the shepherd of 
men ; to live Himself as a man and to 
fall before His Father's terrible mood 
of blind rage working in men. He 
alone dared to become one with the 
spoiler and the spoiled. I bow my 
head before this stranger of the Earth ; 
and why should not I too sing a song 
of belief in Him ? 

It is the spring, and the apple- 
blossom is beautiful because He is there 
E 6$ 



SOLILOQUIES 

in it. To love Him is the only good 
thing in this world. It does not matter 
if He is true ; He is beyond all Truth. 
All things have breath in Him ; I feel 
Him in the earth. When I hammer at 
the rocks and break away fossils that 
have been there for millions of years, 
I am only going a little way into His 
love. When I look up in the night 
and see the light that has left a star 
thousands of years ago, I can only see 
a little way into His love. His love is 
a terrible love — terrible and deep, hard 
for a man to bear ; I have lived in it, 
I know it. I hear people say, " Why 
did He come here to this little Planet ; 
why did He not leave it out ? " I 
answer, " He leaves nothing out ; He 
cannot give anything better than His 
love ; it is of more worth than im- 
mortality." 

A future life is nothing to me ; His 
love is everything. I study the rocks 
and the stars ; I love old, very old his- 
66 



OF A HERMIT 

tory ; it gives me a breath of Him. I 
love to know^ that matter is infinite, for 
His love is in all matter. A stone 
that has never been touched by man is 
touched by Him. The v^orld says it is 
not possible to believe like this, but I 
know it is possible. I would never 
dispute as to whether Christ lived or 
not ; that does not matter. It does 
not matter whether we live. Life is 
wonderful, but we only feel alive when 
we get near Him, for near Him even 
Death liveth. He is the life stream of 
the worlds ; we are all in that stream, 
only we do not know that we are fed 
every day by Him. 

I know quite well He is the most 
unreal, the most unthinkable of ideas ; 
but to feel Him is All ; to believe in 
Him is nothing. We send His love to 
the farthermost star, and He will be 
formed in that star. When He is near, 
very near to us, then we feel His ter- 
rible love and we kill Him. 
67 



SOLILOQUIES 

Even now the mood of belief is gone 
and I turn upon myself and cry out 
against what I am writing ; I shake all 
the thoughts of love about my ears, 
and turn Christ into a worm again. I 
look out again into the mist ; I sit and 
watch the dim evening light that sad- 
dens the hills ; I see the days pass, the 
winter days ; and I taste the creatures, 
the bread and the wine ; and I do not 
feel His body in them, the bread and 
the wine ! I feel the emptiness, the 
unutterable emptiness of all the thoughts 
in the world ; and I hearken to the re- 
mote sounds of the sea. I wonder why 
we can ever leave the simple clearness 
of our lives, in order to crawl into the 
underworld of mystery. I see all things 
common again and myself the com- 
monest of all. I see the Eternal moods 
casting men over and over again into 
the same pit, and I see the Christ, a 
poor dark Arab, lying beaten by the 
rods of the Roman soldiers, because the 
6S 



OF A HERMIT 

wicked sisters of poetry chose him out 
of all men to teach Truth — Truth that 
is hateful to men. Christ, like the 
first swallow, is a promise of summer, 
but only too well we know that the 
summer ends, and then comes " the 
winter of our discontent." 

Who can blame the men who choose 
to live the simple life of swagger and 
bluster and shame ? For all those who 
step into other ways know what they 
see, but they do not often dare to tell it 
to others. I ought to be glad when I 
see in every eye the cunning of deceit ; 
" the getting eye," I might call it, for 
in the lowest cunning there is the only 
abiding happiness for man. That kind 
of life can alone give him joy, under 
the rule of the moods of God. The 
lowest creatures alone have happiness, 
and the children that do not know ; 
and why should we teach them ? 
When I look back at the past, I do not 

69 



SOLILOQUIES 

regard the moods of God at all ; I do 
not care whether I have done good or 
evil ; I do not care whether I cursed 
or whether I blessed ; I do not care 
whether I have been good or wise ; or 
whether I have ever learned Latin ; I 
do not care whether as a priest I have 
kicked over my own altar. 

This is what I care to remember. I 
can feel now the warmth of a perfect 
day in June ; I can see the bugloss on 
the cliff, growing in little patches of 
blue below the white chalk. And I 
remember a night in winter when I 
saw a white lamb lying quite dead 
under a clear moon. I see now the 
rough old black dog, blind of one eye, 
that used to be asleep on the green in 
the dog-days that are past ; and its 
master, a wild old man with a great 
stride and long beard who was always 
hammering up pigsties. 

I look back and see the common 
70 



OF A HERMIT 

things, the human things ; not God's 
moods, or Christ, or the wonder that 
is called man's soul. I believe that I 
have shed more tears over my little 
boy's broken engine that I dug up one 
day in the garden, than over all the 
killing of the Son of Man. I re- 
member how I used to carry a little jug 
and fetch the milk across the green ; 
and I see now the daisies that came out 
altogether one spring day ; and the 
mild look of the red and white cow 
that was always milked first and fed 
upon the green before the others came 
out. I look back again to the long 
winters, to the caressing white mists 
and silvery hoar-frosts ; and afterwards 
the white May that always came out 
first on our hedge. 

No doubt, I, like everyone else who 
knows, would gladly rid myself of the 
deep, fierce, hidden feelings ; of the 
wild moods of God that tear and baffle 
us. How I wish that I could bring all 
71 



SOLILOQUIES 

the dark moods up into the clear air 
of a high mountain, and prevent them 
from ever entering into man again ! I 
long to bring all the hidden thoughts, 
the gnashing of secret teeth into the 
sun. God must come out of His 
heaven, the devil out of his hell, and 
Christ out of the soul, into the light of 
the sun. 

Let the terrible Gods come down 
from on high. If they have prepared 
a future life for us, let us prepare a 
present life for them. And indeed that 
is just what Christ the Son of God 
would have us do. He is willing to 
live with us in the sun ; let us open 
our door to Him. I will take Him, 
and all the rest of the heavenly hosts 
can go, and He will not refuse to 
come. All the deep thought and the 
dread marvels of God can go ; all the 
hidden fears and these secret terrors can 
go. With the Son of Man beside me 
72 



OF A HERMIT 

I can defy the moods ; and even the 
old Devil will cast his darts at me in 
vain. 

It is impossible for me, who am only 
mortal, to keep away from the Son of 
Man ; He is always ready to come in, 
and I am not able to shut Him out ; 
only those who have the immortal 
cravings for life can do that. He will 
not allow me to put Him away ; He 
comes in because it is His right ; He 
comes in because the heart of man is 
His home. 

It is well that I have reached this 
silence, this quiet haven that I longed 
for as a child, and could not find. As 
a young man walking home in the 
dusk of the evening, I longed for it 
then. And as a man, when I struck 
about me breaking up old thoughts, 
burning, thrusting, tearing, and at last 
leaving myself naked, I longed for the 
silence then. I have feared it ; I 
thought that to reach it meant death, 
73 



SOLILOQUIES 

the first step towards death, and I 
struggled. I have tried to piece the 
old thoughts together that as a man I 
had broken. I was like a child, who, 
thinking that she was too old to play 
with her doll, had long ago left it at 
the bottom of the cupboard ; but was 
forced on a rainy day to find it again, 
and to tie on its broken arm and find 
it a new head. I sought for my broken 
God again ; and put it together as it 
used to be, before as a man I broke it 
to pieces. 

At last I begin to know myself; I 
can now love the wonder that is be- 
coming myself. I live now as I wish 
to live ; I take every day as it is. ' I 
do not try to break the day to pieces as 
I used to do. The days pass me like 
hurrying girls on light feet. Years 
ago I longed to hold them and find out 
what secrets they had under their cloud 
and sunshine ; and now I know that it 
74 



OF A HERMIT 

is the days that long to find out my 
secret. They cannot find it out ; they 
are bound to the wheel, they must 
dance on and on and make the young 
men follow them. And they are caught 
sometimes, these girl days ; they are 
torn and broken and their evenings are 
muddy. 

In my life there is human life, that 
is all — human life. If anyone wants 
more than that, he must go beyond me 
to find it. The moods hide God as 
with a garment, but He can find me. 
And He has found me ; and He speaks 
His terrible words in the moods of my 
life. It is no good to try to get out of 
His way. Everywhere the hand of the 
Devastator is upon Man, to press him 
down to the earth. 

Only at times under His yoke I have 

been allowed to take a little nectar 

from the flowers ; I have hidden my 

hand in a waterfall of brown hair ; I 

75 



SOLILOQUIES 

have caught a hurried kiss from a 
breathing sunbeam. This is all we can 
have — all. It is impossible to get 
more out of the world than it can give. 
It is best to ruminate like a cow. 

The world is always rain-swept and 
sun-cracked, soaked with salt mists and 
splashed with mud ; and our lives at 
the best are broken and threadbare, 
while death ever clings to life, slowly- 
devouring it. That is how we are 
made ; and always the moods of God 
fill us with madness, for that is how 
He is made. 

I have always longed to show to 
myself and to make myself see where 
true joy is to be found ; and I want to 
really believe that life can be made a 
beautiful thing. In the old days when 
I held my head in the sand of mystery, 
I thought that something wonderful 
would happen to me ; and now I be- 
lieve that the most wonderful thing is 
76 



OF A HERMIT 

that nothing wonderful happens. We 
are, just as we are, and nothing else ; 
are we not wonderful enough ? By 
just holding up my hand I am often- 
times filled by a divine vision ; by only 
hearing the wind howl in the chimney, 
I am filled with all the harmony of 
music. By eating bread I am fed with 
the whole goodness and fullness of the 
earth. And when the silent mood comes, 
the calmness of immense seas and eter- 
nal spaces fills me. 



For a long time I hid my head under 
the sand, and no wonder I could not 
understand my own words. I know 
now that the things of greatest value 
can be had for the asking. I go into 
the Palace of the Day, that Christ 
opened, the Palace of True Joy. How 
delicately and with what gladness should 
everyone take part in the great festival ! 
The centre of life is always near ; it is 
77 



SOLILOQUIES 

only the outer parts that are afar off 
and hard to understand. 

For a long while I have run after 
the Chariot, and now I have climbed in. 
I know now that the smallest handle 
will do to hold to any part of life, and a 
million bodies like mine can be formed 
of one thought. All my little experi- 
ences can be easily acted in any part 
of the earth. We have built up for 
ourselves such grotesque buildings of 
thought, so high that when we reach 
the top we have to fall off to the 
ground. We are always forming such 
high destinies for ourselves, that we 
have quite lost count of the creature of 
the moods of God, that is ourself. 

Whenever a vision has come to me, 
it has always taken me and shown me 
the delight of just living, — the joy of 
things as they are, — of the earth as it is. 
I have seen only too clearly that my 
happiness is taken from me because of 
7S 



OF A HERMIT 

my desire to become something unut- 
terable. How often has my wish been 
to pretend to be something that I am 
not, and to leave myself in the shade 
while I follow my shadow in the sun. 
I can see in every page of my life that 
my happiness has been taken away be- 
cause of my desire to get into another 
life, rather than to live my own. No 
doubt one day we shall find all the 
mystic writers leaving their pens and 
their burrowings into the unutterable 
mystery of God's being, and instead 
busy themselves all day long peacefully 
planting cabbages. 

God himself has been raised up on 
high, like a stone column that has 
only its mass to be proud of, and man 
is always content to knock his foolish 
head against the base. 

I know that we have His moods to 

create us, and the love of the Son of 

Man to save us from ourselves, and 

that is All I know. Everyone is bound 

79 



SOLILOQUIES 

to set his net in the sea of his life, and 
to bring home in his net the fish that 
he deserves or desires, as the case may- 
be ; and he devours them, or what is 
more likely, they devour him. 

I have described myself, and have 
told of my hopes and aspirations, of 
my fears and of the way I dig in my 
garden. But I am afraid I have given 
quite a wrong idea, because in writing, 
it is impossible to forget that you are 
writing. When you are writing there 
is always the wish to stab the heart of 
the matter ; you want to get to the 
exciting part of your thought, the part 
of your thought that excites you. That 
is why I have thrown all my stones at 
one dog and left my hands empty. I 
would like to think how a friend would 
write about me, and it must be a friend 
with a little wit, and not a soul that 
loves. 

The first part of my confessions, tell- 
80 



OF A HERMIT 

ing how I touch the earth and sky, 
and the thoughts of man, are finished ; 
and I would like to know what I look 
like from their point of view. The 
earth loves me, I think I may say that ; 
the great divine Mother presence tells 
quite clearly of her love. The hills do 
not turn away ; they have no other pur- 
suits, other wars, other things to make, 
so that they must leave me alone. 
There is something in being able to 
laugh at a million years, and being 
able to laugh at the proud overgrown 
giants in Switzerland — that is what our 
chalk downs can do. And they can 
bear me up in their arms for my little 
while, and not so much as feel that a 
shadow of life has passed over them. 
In them the moods of God burn hidden 
like spent lightning, a dread forsaken 
fire burning underground. 

A few million years gives our hills 
time to reflect upon the moods, and we 
F 8i 



SOLILOQUIES 

men need a little of the spirit of their 
long-suffering, so that God Himself may 
sink deep for a while, nay, may even be 
buried in us. And were men ever to 
act together as one man, which was 
once dreamed of, then we should pre- 
sent to the gods that calm upper sur- 
face, that unperturbed grassy height, 
and low meadow land, and upland fal- 
low, so that the moods themselves could 
sink deep into our matter. But alas, 
our surface is weak and each little man 
must needs be a bearer of good tidings ; 
each little man must needs set himself 
under the hammer, so that he on a very 
dark night emits a spark, and cries out 
in the night that he is saved, and in 
the morning that he is damned. 

The hills I love have a noble out- 
ward presence like a faithful comrade ; 
they stay with me even when it rains, 
and they stay for more than two 
nights ; I thank them for their silence 
and their gifts. The flowers have an- 
82 



OF A HERMIT 

Other way with them ; they are not 
so friendly. And I fear, it is sad to 
think of it, that they have learned 
from their creator how to hate. Ah ! 
the pleasure to a rose when it can get 
a thorn into a human finger ; and 
think of the joy of a red berry when it 
poisoned little Betsey ; or the merry 
jests of a bunch of Mary buds that 
once attracted a little boy into the 
middle of a swamp, where he was 
drowned. Flowers can speak almost 
like women ; I have seen a very angry 
look in the eyes of a white nettle, be- 
cause it could not sting me ; and the 
rage of a musk thistle when I steal its 
fragrance without being pricked is quite 
ladylike. 

Above the flowers are the beasts, or 
below them — there is always a little 
doubt which to say. The beast loves 
the man that has tamed him ; yes, 
sometimes. And the gentle creatures, 
are they gentle ? Will not a dove fight 
83 



SOLILOQUIES 

in its own way, as fiercely as a lion, for 
all its pink eyes ? Take up a wild live 
hare and hold it, and see if your 
hands are not torn by its claws. The 
moods are beginning to have claws in 
the beasts ; but wait till we get to man. 
I wonder what these beings, that are 
made of the same stuff as myself, make 
of me. I do not think it would be much 
good to take the opinion of a country- 
man in this matter. A ploughman 
critic would indeed speak his mind after 
his own manner, and that not unworldly, 
for the earthy wit of the peasant brings 
the art of the critic to a very lean 
level indeed, by judging simply by what 
a man has. I own a cottage, therefore 
my value to the clown is exactly the 
value of my cottage, plus the value of 
my overcoat and the value of my 
boots. I notice that the passers-by of 
the fields always look at my boots. Do 
they expect to see the cloven hoof, I 
wonder ? 

84 



OF A HERMIT 

A gentleman came here once for the 
shooting ; he came from town. I may 
as well say here that he belonged to 
the immortal type of man ; and when 
he was not shooting he attached him- 
self to me, and he found me very ready 
to listen to his bons mots^ although 
they were not quite in the same style 
as our Saviour's. I will now, for a 
little while, try to become this im- 
mortal young man, who has now gone 
somewhere else for the shooting. And 
I will write a little story about myself 
from the watch-tower of this young 
man. In so doing I hope to get at the 
other side of myself, that I could not 
very well touch in the first part of my 
confessions. 

And now, soul of my soul, child of 
the moon, I will begin ; I am trans- 
formed. 

" Mr. Thomas is the only name that 
will suit the occupier of the red house 
85 



SOLILOQUIES 

in the village of . Mr. Thomas is 

so utterly diflFerent from his own name, 
it would be a cap with a wrong colour 
for him. His name should have come 
from a simple man who once upon a 
time, in a fit of sadness, begat a son. 
I can never think of Mr. Thomas by 
his real name. If I were to call out 
' Powys, Powys,' as I might to my 
dog, I very much doubt whether I 
should get any answer. If I were to 
call him by his real name, this story 
about him would appear to the public 
to be quite untrue, for people would 
say that such a name could not have 
such a story. That is why I call him 
Mr. Thomas. 

" I would like to say, at the begin- 
ning, that this type, the type of Mr. 
Thomas, is not a type that I approve 
of. I cannot say that I think that God 
has expressed His divine purpose very 
well in this kind of man — a man that 
does not even know how to treat a 
86 



OF A HERMIT 

tradesman, and who will thank a porter 
for doing what he is paid to do. Mr. 
Thomas has what I will call a very- 
careworn conscience, a conscience that 
is quite unable to look after its own 
interests. 

" I am writing about him only ' as a 
person that I have met ' — for Heaven's 
sake understand that, good people. I 
do not regard him as my friend, be- 
cause no one could be that, unless he 
were born under the same star. I used 
to see him sometimes, that was all, and 
walk with him a little, and allow him 
to listen to a few little stories of my 
own, and perhaps to gently instruct 
him in the art of living a good life. 
I may say here that I have no wish to 
be damned with him ; neither do I 
wish to be caught up in a cloud with 
him and carried to heaven. 

" Mr. Thomas is married, and he digs 
in his garden. He looks rather like 
a landscape artist who has spent ten 
87 



SOLILOQUIES 

summers in trying to draw an old foot- 
bridge, two willow trees, and a cow, 
and could never finish his picture be- 
cause the cow would never lie down. 
He looks as if he has spent all these 
years in wondering why the cow would 
never lie down ; and last of all, his 
patience being quite exhausted, he 
packed up his canvas and, after walk- 
ing slowly home in deep thought, 
began to dig in his garden. 

" The garden that Mr. Thomas culti- 
vated was round about his house ; and 
his house was in the middle of a grass 
field ; and anyone going past could see 
the lines of potatoes when Mr. Thomas 
planted them. And round the garden 
wfere very old railings. I was talking 
to Mr. Thomas one day, and leaning 
over the railings, and they fell in 
pieces. ' I said I was very sorry ; Mr. 
Thomas only smiled. And I said, 
being annoyed, ' Why can't you get 
some good iron railings round your 
88 



OF A HERMIT 

garden ? * Mr. Thomas looked at me 
in extreme sorrow. 

" I remember first seeing Mr. Thomas 
under the great white nose of the Giant 
ClifF, for his village is near the sea. I 
had been shooting rabbits with a rifle, 
and I was beginning to climb the 
narrow path that leads to the top of 
the clifF, when I noticed a man moving 
along by the rocks towards the path. 
While I was on the shore he must have 
been amongst the rocks, and now he 
began to climb the clifF behind me, 
taking care to keep a good distance 
away. When I rested, he rested, and 
he seemed most unwilling to catch me 
up. He no doubt said to himself, 
' There is no hurry ; I will wait here 
until that person is gone.' Well, I 
waited just over the brow of the clifF, 
where he could not see me, and when 
he did appear I inquired of him the 
way to his village. And like all 
nervous people he could not give me 
89 



SOLILOQUIES 

a direct answer ; he spoke as if he 
did not know. And then he told 
me the different attributes of the 
ways that I might take ; and last of 
all he offered to show me the way 
himself. 

" As we walked I knew Mr. Thomas 
was what we call in the polite world 
a ' crank ' ; he walked as if at any 
moment the earth might give way ; 
and as we looked across the bay to- 
wards the Isle of Slingers, he kept a 
very proper distance from the cliff 
edge. 

" My first impression of Mr. Thomas 
was a curious feeling that he was hid- 
ing something ; or that he was the 
guardian of a treasure of which he was 
not allowed to speak. And he seemed 
to fear me, and when I pointed out to 
him the beauty of the green seaweed 
far below us he turned hurriedly to- 
wards the setting sun. I belong myself 
to one of the liberal professions, and I 
90 



OF A HERMIT 

have cultivated a proper manner to use 
with my inferiors. Mr. Thomas spoke 
rather quickly, in a low tone, and I did 
not often reply ; he wanted to say fool- 
ish things about the weather, and I let 
him. I could tell how nervous he was 
by his hurried way of speaking, and by 
the way he fell over the white stones 
that coastguards put along the path and 
whitewash, so that they may see the 
way on a dark night ; and I walked in 
the path, there being only room for 
one. 

" Mr. Thomas talked of his favourite 
snug corners by the sea, as a bird would 
of his resting places, with the fear all 
the time in his heart that I might rob 
him of them. And then he talked 
about the working people that are 
called labourers, because he happened 
to see one. We passed a tumulus 
covered with brambles, the chief 
growth in that part of the country. 
Between the brambles there was a way, 
91 



SOLILOQUIES 

as though someone was in the habit of 
climbing up, — no doubt Mr. Thomas 
himself, — and Mr. Thomas found his 
way to the top and looked towards the 
distant hills, and then at me. And he 
told me about a clump of trees (I never 
looked, though he pointed at it) that 
marked a deep pit like the upper part 
of a funnel, so he said, that an old 
botanist called Culpepper used to boil 
his potions in, and he told me that in 
a certain direction there was a line of 
hills that marked the middle of the 
county ; and a tower that was Some- 
body's ' folly,' — goodness knows where 
that was. We talked of poetry ; Mr. 
Thomas told me about one of his 
favourite poems, a poem that could be 
loved, he said, by a saint and by a 
sinner. He had the book in his pocket 
and read me one verse as we walked. 
He said it was virginal, a verse for a 
child to learn. Here is the verse ; he 
read only one. 

92 



OF A HERMIT 

"The dew no more will weep 
The primrose's pale cheek to deck ; 

The dew no more will sleep 
Nuzzled in the lily's neck ; 
Much rather would it tremble here 
And leave them both to be thy tear. 

"And thus we walked over great fields, 
filled, every one of them, with stones, 
everlasting stones ; not smooth shining 
pebbles — sharp zigzag flints. And the 
chalk of the hills in places broke 
through the thin covering of grass, 
like the skin of a beggar showing 
through her ragged clothing. We 
went through a gate that a man whom 
we had seen slouching along in front 
of us had left half open. Mr. Thomas 
persisted in spending quite ten minutes 
to fasten some barbed wire round the 
top of this gate ; and in answer to my 
question as to why he did it, he said, 
' These people never shut the gates ; 
the sheep will get in, and when I come 
this way again, I shall have to drive 
93 



SOLILOQUIES 

them out.' 'The farmer ought to 
put up a notice about the gate/ I said. 
' It was the farmer who left the gate 
open,' Mr. Thomas gently replied. 

" I left Mr. Thomas by his own door, 
or rather by his railings, and I walked 
through the village street to the inn. 
The innkeeper was feeding his pigs, 
and after he had finished feeding them, 
he showed me a badger that he kept 
in a barrel. Mr. Thomas' house was 
visible from the inn-yard, and I could 
see that he was hoeing in his garden. 
1 looked around me. The land was 
not a fat land ; the grass, like the thin 
clothes of the labourers, only just 
covered up the poverty beneath. I 
asked the landlord about Mr. Thomas, 
but he had not much to tell me, beyond 
the fact that ' he lived over there,' 
pointing to the house. 

" Mr. Thomas did not give me a very 
cordial welcome when I called in the 
morning, and he did not want to come 
94 



OF A HERMIT 

out ; but I dragged him from whatever 
he was doing, I don't know what it 
was, and compelled him to come out 
with me. We walked along the cold 
hills, cold as if the ice that made and 
modelled them still froze the ground. 
We went along a path going continu- 
ally uphill, like the narrow path that 
leads to heaven. And in a hollow 
place near a pond we came upon an 
empty cottage, near a tumble-down 
barn ; we looked through the broken 
window at the stone floor and open 
grate of the living-room — an English- 
man's home in Arcadia. 'No one 
lives here now,' he said ; ' that is why 
I like to come this way.' 

" The next thing that we did was to 
tramp across a heavy ploughed field, 
and then along by a hedge filled with 
nettles and sharp thorns, and in one 
place I saw the half-eaten carcass of a 
sheep ; and in a pit there were the 
bones of a horse among the cowslips. 
95 



SOLILOQUIES 

Mr. Thomas regarded these phenomena 
with the same gentle look, as being 
part of the accepted order of things. 
After a while Mr. Thomas grew less 
shy of me, and he began to confide to 
me some of his ideas — ideas about God 
and the weather. We will take his 
ideas about the weather first. He 
thought the raindrops beat with per- 
sistent spite upon him ; and that the 
wind buffeted him as if it loved doing 
it. He thought the storms always 
waited until he wanted to go out, and 
then fell merrily upon his head. And 
yet I think he was in a better mood on 
a dull day than when the sun shone. 
He did not like to turn away from the 
sun, and was never easy with his back 
to it. This may have been the in- 
stinctive willing of some plant in him, 
for his nature belonged to the plant 
tribe that grows in wild places. He 
used to lie on the long withered cliff 
grass in the winter and take in to his 
96 



OF A HERMIT 

body the little warmth that came from 
the sun, like a beaten elder tree that 
waited for the spring. 

" I liked to torment him and drive 
him out of his last stronghold, and 
then see what he would say ; and how 
he would try to escape me. Mr. 
Thomas belonged to the type of man 
that can be cut down in a moment 
with words. He could be put out of 
action with one or two simple remarks 
that touched his pride ; and then he 
would simply go into his shell like a 
hermit crab ; he would detach himself 
from all that he had and keep only his 
skin. And then if the attack were 
pushed, which was always worth doing, 
that last hope in his own life would be 
taken away, and he would feel himself 
completely gone into nothingness. 
This condition of his completed the 
jest, and he would walk home across 
the stony fields, a little tired. 

" But after a day or two he would pos- 
Q 97 



SOLILOQUIES 

sess himself again, fully clothed and in 
his right mind, believing in himself, and 
even going so far as to think that he 
had in his soul a few little things of 
which he might be proud, and also 
that he had a few more cigarettes to 
smoke. And the next time I saw him 
I would give him a hint about the good 
that he might find in himself if he ate 
a, little of the apple that grows in the 
middle of the garden. And I ex- 
plained, as well as I could, that every- 
thing is made by God for the amusement 
of man ; and that the good and evil in 
life should be kept very separate, other- 
wise we should never enjoy being evil, 
or ever be bored by being good. 

" I tried in this way to teach Mr. 
Thomas a little about the ethics of the 
Christian churches, especially the Angli- 
can Church of Great Britain. I told 
him that popular opinion, the opinion 
of the butchers and their customers, 
would be for ever unto the end against 
98 



OF A HERMIT 

' that horrid German,' and ' that 
wicked Jew,' who both tried to untie 
the priestly knot that hangs up the 
world, and not only hangs it up, but 
holds it up. 

" I tried to explain to Mr. Thomas 
that the mass of humanity loves to be 
good and to sin, by turns — to sin and 
repent and to sin again, just as the sun 
repents and covers the earth with its 
glory after the dark rains of the night. 
It is necessary, I said, for the priest to 
invent every morning new sins for the 
people ; golden calves and pretty 
dancers. And the priest must show 
the people how to enjoy them. And 
sometimes for a change he can throw 
into the cup of their gladness one or 
two little pills of virtue, for the sake of 
their bowels. 

" ' And now, my good Mr. Thomas,' 

I said, ' for Heaven's sake do not throw 

me' into that ice water of beyond 

thought that your mad German loved 

99 



SOLILOQUIES 

SO well.' Mr. Thomas used to wait 
for a shining light to come ; he used to 
wait like a hen brooding over her eggs ; 
he used to brood in odd corners and 
try to hatch a little god out of his eggs 
— a little god that would save his type, 
the outcast monk type, from the well- 
deserved stones and jeers of the people. 
I need not say that all his eggs were 
addled, for he never got anything out 
of them, sit as long as he might. 

" He would not believe, although I 
told him over and over again, that it is 
the weight of the mass of humanity 
that bears the world along ; and that 
nothing can change its course, not even 
the lightning of the gods, nor the 
thoughts of little monk priests. Mr. 
Thomas never even hatched a little devil 
out of the eggs that he brooded over, 
and he knew it. He knew that he had 
found nothing ; he knew that he had 
searched the orchard and had not even 
found the crab ; he knew that all his 

ICO 



OF A HERMIT 

life he had lived in a mystic alley that 
leads no whither. 

" I tried to show him what life is, as 
we know it, as we the happy ones have 
made it ; and I told him that the one 
thing to avoid, the one thing that 
really gives pain, is what is called ' the 
serious state of mind ' — the brooding, 
the dark brooding of the dead stars. 
' The good God looks down from on 
high.' 'The priests say so, and that 
is all we want to know about Him.' 
And when I said this Mr. Thomas 
gently stroked his beard, and smiled, 
and inquired whether I had a cigarette 
in my case, as he had left his at 
home. 

" Standing on the cliff top one day and 
looking towards the town over the sea, 
I asked Mr. Thomas why he did not 
live down there, instead of the dreary 
spot that he had chosen. He waited 
for a little while and then said, ' I like 
the language of these hills better ; they 

lOI 



SOLILOQUIES 

are higher up ' (which indeed was 
true), 'and amongst those church spires 
I fear that the people do not always 
speak the truth.' ' But/ I said, 
' their lies are public lies ; they live by 
public opinion ; they all have one 
object in life, and what that is, the 
smallest servant girl knows best.' 

" Human life is only innocent when it 
lives in the fairyland of fancy ; if it 
goes running after the gods, it becomes 
mad ; if it goes running back to the 
beasts, it becomes like a nation at war ; 
the best thing it can do is to stay 
where it is. Humanity reached its 
goal when it became man ; and it is in 
the same world now, because this is the 
only world it can have ; it must go on 
just as it has gone on, and that for ever. 
' That German ' thought of something 
more wonderful than Man, and he ran 
to the gods — mad. ' That Jew ' 
thought of something wonderful ; He 
thought of adopting a Father ; and He 
1 02 



OF A HERMIT 

thought of mankind loving one another ; 
and He went to the Cross. 

"Man develops on certain lines, and 
then explodes and goes on again on the 
same lines. If he tries to climb up to 
the gods, he goes mad, and a vulture 
devours him. He is only right if he 
remains just what he is, simply a man. 
He has scholarships, science, and a 
million industries. He has municipal 
gardens, and school playgrounds. His 
priests are now grown quite big enough 
to drive away the little gods that come 
in the night ; and he can always enjoy 
excitement in the body politic by 
pinching the ears of the women. He 
can believe in a future life ; he can 
believe in a future death ; he can be- 
lieve that Christ is God, and that God 
is Christ, and that Christ is man, but 
he can never fill the cup fuller than his 
manhood will hold. 

" See how genius at a certain point 
always breaks down. ' That German ' 
103 



SOLILOQUIES 

went a little too far, and when he came 
to the two kings and the last Pope, he 
went mad. And the other one, ' the 
Jew ' — He went on preaching very- 
well to the people, until by a sad mis- 
chance, the people began to understand 
what He said, and when the people 
understood, instead of going mad them- 
selves, they killed Him. 

" That is the way of the world, and it 
happens like that because man's mind 
can only go to a certain point, and 
then it breaks. Every mind breaks 
when it does more than a man can do, 
and it breaks in unexpected ways. The 
duty of a philosopher (and the modern 
philosopher knows his duty) is to keep 
the sheep ; that is to say, to drive the 
wolves of thought away from the 
people, and hang the wolves up — in 
hard and long words, in the philo- 
sophers' complex minds that are fitted 
out with little hooks to hang each wolf 
up by. 

104 



OF A HERMIT 

"The priests who also know their 
duty have to keep the gods away from 
the flock, for fear the flock might give 
away some of its wool, or perhaps even 
a ewe lamb, here and there, without a 
priest's blessing. 

" If either of these guardians neglects 
his duty, the people quite rightly de- 
vour him. ' It looks like that — that 
is how the world looks,' answered Mr. 
Thomas. And yet why should we not 
believe a little and love a little, even if 
we do go mad ? 

" I think sometimes when I come 
home tired to my gate, that I must not 
come in. I think that I must go on 
walking past my gate, through the one 
or two villages where I am known, and 
then on and on and on. 

"When Jesus adopted God as His 
Father, He made God begin again as 
a Babe. When He took everything 
away from Himself, He took every- 
thing away from His Father ; we that 
105 



SOLILOQUIES 

are fathers know that a son can do that. 
No one need try to take God and put 
Him upon a great white throne, when 
His Son has taken Him down. When 
the Son gave up all power, the Father 
had to give up all power too ; when 
the Son gave up life, it was the Father's 
life that He gave up, as well as His 
own. 

" There is no need for us to become 
anything more than what we are, in 
order to believe in the Son of Man. 
We can enter all that He has entered ; 
we can give up all that He has given 
up, without being a superman or a 
brute beast. It is not in extremes that 
the road to heaven lies ; the way to 
life is the same now as it has ever 
been ; it is in the meaning of things. 
Surely the Son of God has shown Him- 
self in a form that we, even we, can 
understand. 

"The people marked Him as an 
enemy, and His presence in us will one 
io6 



OF A HERMIT 

day make the impossible come to pass ; 
that day will come. We feel that we 
are at an end ; we feel that we are 
come to our goal ; but at the same time 
we know that there is ' that other ' 
belonging to us, ' that other one ' who 
is with us and knows no end. 

" Every day I look at the fields as 
though I am soon to bid them an 
eternal farewell. Perhaps my life has 
passed through many bodies and I am 
the last. A star of life with its own 
colour, its own raiment, and its own 
joys has entered into me to die. But 
the star has still its desires and its long- 
ings ; I do not want its light to go out 
like a snuffed candle. I would like it 
to live again in some other body ; I 
would like it to feel the earth through 
many, many other lives. I do not wish 
to be the grave for the death of a star. 
I want it to carry my life on, and on, 
and on. And yet it is only when a star 
is dying in you that you can feel its 
107 



SOLILOQUIES 

life ; and it is only when a star is dying 
in you that you can feel the sorrows of 
the Son of Man. 

" And this is the way that Mr. Thomas 
used to talk. I waved my stick as I 
passed his gate on my way back to 
town. He held a spade in his hand, 
and was digging a hole in the ground 
for a new post to hold up his railings. 
I waved my stick, and he, taking very 
little notice, went on with his work." 

When anyone reads a confession like 
this they should express no philistine 
reflection such as, " This good man 
might have done better with his life " ; 
or, " If we all start writing confessions, 
what a world it would be ! '* I sup- 
pose I have the priest's instinctive de- 
light — or love, shall we say — of hearing 
a tale that comes from a man's fear 
rather than from his wits ; and in 
speaking or writing a confession, one is 
always coming near to something ugly 
io8 



OF A HERMIT 

in the dark of oneself. I touch the 
hoof, or the fur, or the horns, or the 
tusks, as I write. 

It is this ugly thing that has a way 
of peeping out at us when we talk 
about ourselves ; and the sight of half 
its head, not a very pretty half, makes 
most people begin to talk about some- 
thing else. If you, my dear child or 
brother, begin to tell a few secrets of 
your own being, you will know what 
I mean. You will find, dear friend, 
when you take your pen to begin, and 
poke about with your finger and thumb 
into your own heart, that you touch 
something not at all nice, not exactly 
what you thought. 

It is the custom, I know, not to con- 
fess ; to let that inside of you remain 
hidden under a well-ordered life ; and 
besides it does not do to risk being 
laughed at by the people. I know that 
in every confession there is always 
worse left behind than what is said ; 
109 



SOLILOQUIES 

for we none of us dare to utter the 
whole of our wickedness. I cannot 
help thinking that many of the pangs 
of human life were quieted and stilled 
by the use of the confessional. Any- 
how, to look at oneself with rather 
more than a critical eye is a good 
thing ; if only to show the gods that 
they could do a little better with our 
substance another day. 

One can see, while writing odd 
things about oneself, that inside the 
mob still rules, just as it does outside in 
the world. And the mob may be riot- 
ing quite merrily under a policeman's 
jacket, or corrupting innocence under 
lawn sleeves in a cathedral. I think 
that the mob, — I know them, even 
hidden in a snug English village, — I 
think that the mob will always rule ; 
for it is by the law of hate and not by 
the law of love that the world lives and 
has its being. 



no 



OF A HERMIT 

In the world there will never be 
security, but there will always be ex- 
citement ; and there is no reason why 
we should not sometimes get excited 
about ourselves, and by so doing reveal 
ourselves as something more than crea- 
tures to be fed. 

I think every father would do very 
well to write a book of his own short- 
comings for his children to read. And 
perhaps so many fathers, who nowa- 
days appear so very foolish to their 
families, might by writing their confes- 
sions, show their children that they did 
not sign cheques and say family prayers 
by clockwork, being wound up every 
evening by the cook in the best par- 
lour. The fear of looking a fool has 
cost the world more good lives than it 
wots of. 

We go about the world being 
friendly, but the mob always tells us 



SOLILOQUIES 

where to go, and how to confine our 
friendliness to the railway carriage, and 
our morals to our homes. The mob 
soon breaks our windows, if we do not 
behave after its manner. All our little 
moral sensations are upon the surface of 
our lives ; it is the great immoralist 
that lies beneath. And you have not 
got to go very far into the lives of the 
people before you come upon him. 

In writing my confessions I began to 
take notice of my pride. I found my- 
self so proud that I preferred to leave 
the camel drivers and suffer cold, rather 
than endure their loud laughter. And 
I see quite well that there is no getting 
to the bottom of the pride of a man. 
We cannot take cover from our pride. 
I think it quite likely that the least 
pride is found in the busiest man, and 
the most, in an idle slave. We cannot 
get away from our pride, do what we 
will. And my pride is quite a plain 

112 



OF A HERMIT 

thing to see even in these pages. I 
show it on purpose ; I am proud ; I 
like to be proud ; I intend to be proud. I 
know the pride of a saint when he shuts 
himself up away from the world ; I know 
the pride of a sinner when he boasts to 
the mob of what he can do. The very 
fact that I love those lines of Bunyan, 

" He that is down need fear no fall, 
He that is low no pride." 

shows how proud I am. Ah ! shep- 
herd boy in the valley, I know thy 
ways, and it is quite possible that the 
Lord Mayor of London has a heart less 
proud than thine. 

We that love to be at the bottom, 
we saints in the wilderness, we humble 
people in the fields, we peaceful people 
in leafy lanes — it is with reason that 
the city man, the wicked sinner, should 
treat us somewhat roughly, for he fears 
us. He fears that if he did not speak 
very loud, we might make him take 
H 113 



SOLILOQUIES 

off his shoes when he comes into our 
garden, and stand in the mud with bare 
feet. Perhaps if we of the saintly tribe, 
we exempt ones, — if we were compelled 
to be iron kings, or wheat kings, or 
petrol kings, — it is possible that we 
saints might relinquish some of our 
abominable pride. The very size of 
our palaces would then diminish some of 
our bigness. I can make myself out to 
be a saint, I can pull myself to pieces as 
a sinner, I can show myself as a fool in 
a world of folly. We are all little men 
that eat off the earth's crust ; I am one 
of the mob, that is all that can be said. 

I am told by one wiser than I that I 
must throw more light upon this sub- 
ject of immortality that I have alluded 
to here and there. I am quite willing 
to make my meaning more clear ; I do 
not want to be misunderstood, and this 
is what I think. I believe that the 
more dead anything is the more it 
114 



OF A HERMIT 

lasts ; and the more ignoble a thing is 
the longer it lasts. The most base 
thing in me longs the most to live for 
ever. I may as well say that it is from 
my own feelings that I get my thoughts 
upon immortality. And I know my- 
self a little. I also know that I get the 
thought from Him. 

The most wonderful idea that has 
ever come to man came to Jesus. It 
came to Him silent, subtile, and like 
the lightning. The idea that came to 
Him was this : He wished to create 
for a moment a state of vision with no 
earthly everlasting deadness about it ; 
to create a new heaven and a new earth. 
The longer anything lasts, the worse it 
always becomes, but the divine idea 
came to Jesus without beginning and 
without end ; and in a moment it be- 
came Himself. 

We cannot conceive the lightning 
rapidity in which the vision of true 
IIS 



SOLILOQUIES 

life enters in and passes out of our 
minds. Our minds do not like this 
kind of thing ; they are not used to it ; 
only by a strange chance Jesus held 
the new idea for a moment, and that 
moment gave Him time to understand, 
because He was the one that was ready 
to understand. 

Just such a wonderful moment may 
have come by a happy or an unhappy 
chance to a beast, and that was the 
moment that made the beast into a 
man. What Jesus saw and lived, we 
may see and live ; only we prefer the 
immortality of our earth that we have 
always had, to the new heaven of Jesus. 
We would rather live in part dead for 
a great many lives, than share with 
Jesus His kingdom for a moment. His 
vision, His idea, was the frailest begin- 
ning, the most delicate and the most 
quickly killed, of any idea that has ever 
come to man. 



ii6 



OF A HERMIT 

Our immortal baseness is trained and 
schooled ; is organized to cast out at 
once this kind of vision. We know 
only too well that our old happiness, 
our old Godhead, our old immortality, 
is imperilled by it. We know the 
danger of a vision that filled one nian 
so suddenly with burning light, 
burning Him up in a moment, and 
leaving Him only a wild mad thing, 
crying out desperate and loving words. 
We know the danger of a vision that 
burnt the immortal man in Him right 
out in a moment, and left a new man 
with a strange, a wild, and unearthly 
courage, a man from whom the mob 
took toll and laughter, and then after 
a little while, fearing for themselves, 
hanged Him upon the cross. 

The whole atmosphere of our lives 
bursts out in rage against this other 
sense, this new vision, that ends in a 
moment our immortality. We cannot 
graft our everlasting life into the vision 
117 



SOLILOQUIES 

that He beheld ; our immortality goes 
on and on, and if we want to enter the 
Vision of Jesus, we must stop our 
chariot. This vision, this new heaven, 
is life in a moment ; but our way of 
life is everlasting years. 



The result of the vision is quite clear 
in the kind of man that Jesus was. 
Though the vision died down in Him 
at times, all the signs of our immortal 
greed for life, in His life, are dead. 
He begins to eat of the earth as a 
sacranient, and, wonder of wonders, He 
can love and bless men instead of turn- 
ing fiercely upon the will to devour, — 
He must have seen that in the mob, — 
instead of cursing the base lives of men, 
and their hungry laughter, instead of 
casting all the thoughts of man away. 
He blesses them. He opened the way 
to a new life, and He longed that the 
vision that will free man from his im- 
ii8 



OF A HERMIT 

mortality may come to all, and be 
received by all. 

No wonder man fled from this kind 
of freedom ; for we prefer to retain the 
immortality that is our right. I can 
hear many people declaim, being quite 
amazed at my utter disregard for estab- 
lished beliefs. I can hear them shout, 
" We do not want to end, thou thrice 
foolish Mr. Thomas, we do not want to 
end ; we will all most willingly, without 
any asking of questions, take the im- 
mortality that you in your folly so 
roundly cry out upon. Give us that 
immortality ; it is just what we all pray 
for. Remove from us, take out of our 
sight for ever, this vision that takes 
away our precious lives ; do not leave 
us alone with Jesus ; perhaps some good 
kind pastor will come between. Do not 
take anything more away from us ; we 
want more than our lives, we want to 
go on living." I can hear people of 
the world shout out at me like this ; 
119 



SOLILOQUIES 

and I say to them, " Goodly people, 
kindly livers, who sometimes offer life- 
belts to women when the ship is sink- 
ing, I hear all your loud shouting, I 
answer quite calmly, 'You will go on 
living, dear children ; did not your 
fathers hate, just as you hate; did not 
they get things, just as you get things ; 
did not they eat their dinners and leave 
the beggars outside, just as you and I 
eat our dinners ? ' " 



I can promise that our pretending at 
little games of Virtue never in the 
least hampers our real lives ; our real 
lives go on through many years just 
in the same way. Your thoughts, 
exactly your thoughts and not an- 
other's, will be always here ; the im- 
mortal part of you, your man-self, must 
go on, because it does not desire to be 
anything else than itself. It is never 
worn out ; it has the best of systems — 

120 



OF A HERMIT 

separate bodies to live in ; when you 
are old, or perhaps before that time, 
you will die ; but that will mean 
nothing to you, and your immortality 
will just dance away as merrily as 
ever. 

All this is very easy to explain ; but 
the way of Jesus is not so easy. He 
made a way that opposed everything 
that we have seen or heard of, and most 
of all, it undermined our immortality. 
His way ends our old lives in a moment ; 
because if you take away our anger, our 
greed, our hatred, our getting on, our 
eating the black man, our biting the 
white woman, our sermon-preaching, 
our amusements with young ladies, our 
walking to church, our throat-cutting, 
our afternoon tea-parties, and all the 
tools we have made for killing other 
people, and the medicine for killing 
ourselves, — if you take away all our 
good deeds, — we know what they are, 
— if you take all these arts and fancies 

121 



SOLILOQUIES 

away from a man, if you take them 
away you will leave no man at all, you 
will leave nothing. 

"Ah ! but my soul, Mr. Thomas, you 
have quite forgotten my soul ; surely 
when the labours and little amusements 
of my life are taken away, my soul 
will live. When, as a good man tired 
with all my self-sacrifice, tired with 
all my good deeds, tired with all my 
kind treatment of little children, I 
leave my poor worn-out body, is not 
that the proper moment for my soul to 
save me ? " Our souls, my good people, 
are the least certain of all our posses- 
sions ; our souls are not possessions at 
all. I will tell you what my soul is. 
My soul is a waiting, hesitating, long- 
ing silence ; it is the most delicate, the 
most ethereal, the most ready to die 
away of all the silent noiseless feet 
that we feel moving in our lives. And 
it waits, and often its flame goes out 
while it waits. It is not chained to 

122 



OF A HERMIT 

the moods ; it is the waiting silence in 
us that is free. 

The life of the world is as it is made 
to be ; it can never be anything else ; 
it can never really change. The little 
children of the world are happy some- 
times, when they get what they want. 
But there is not so very much happi- 
ness to be given away between the 
stars, and there is a very vast deal of 
misery. 

This is our immortality, because all 
the feelings are really exactly the same 
to everyone, though some of course feel 
more and some less. 

When a Prime Minister succeeds in 
negotiating a secret Treaty of Alliance 
somewhere or other, for the good of 
the war-outfit trade of his country, and 
the other names and seals are duly set 
to it, the exalted feelings of this good 
Prime Minister are exactly the same 
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SOLILOQUIES 

as those of our chimney-sweep — dead 
now, honest man — when he has brought 
down from our parlour chimney with 
one good jerk a large quantity of soot. 
And when an old lean woman, the 
leanest in the village, slinks home with 
a few stolen sticks from the squire's 
wood, her feeling of exultation is just 

the same as Mr. 's feeling when he 

has made a corner in wheat, in Wall 
Street, a place I seem to have heard of. 
A Gentleman Farmer riding home from 
market in his motor, after having sold 
a cow at a good war price, that has 
gored one of his milk hands the day 
before, feels just like a naughty girl 
who has successfully robbed a foolish 
young man of his gold watch, in a flat 
in Houndsditch. 

We share all our good actions with 
other people, just as we share the air 
that we breathe. All our actions are 
made of exactly the same stuff, like 

J24 



OF A HERMIT 

the Stars — the eternal stuff out of 
which everything is made, everything" 
except the lightning that destroys them. 
To that lightning Jesus opened His 
bosom ; it struck dead all His im- 
mortality ; in one flash it sent a new 
wonder through the old immortal stuif 
of which He was made. Ah ! there was 
irony in that shaft of light from that 
other place, for it left only one feeling 
the same in Jesus ; one feeling it could 
not kill ; one feeling that He had in 
common with all men even unto the 
end — I mean the feeling of sorrow. 

So great is the charm of really dying 
that the ordinary death of a man is a 
little thing in comparison. The feelings 
are gay or sad, wicked or good in every 
man : they are over all the earth. Of 
course, the bodies that hold them 
change because the bodies wear out ; 
but the feelings are always hungry, 
always the same, always yourself. When 
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SOLILOQUIES 

the squire's new motor makes you skip 
into a muddy ditch, the squire feels 
just like you feel when you make Mr. 
Thomas walk by your side in the 
gutter ; and the feelings of men do not 
die. 

The feelings or the moods of God, as 
I used to call them — it is natural to 
me to change my words a little — must 
have some kind of bottle to hold them ; 
they have you, with your beating heart, 
your brain, your nerves, and your bones, 
that are, I fear, getting a little too stiff 
to enjoy dancing. They have you, 
and they make you dance, as they do 
everyone else. They even made Him 
dance a little round a barren fig-tree, 
but not in a way that pleased the 
people. 

At first the people thought Him a 

quack doctor that did not want to be 

paid for His work, that went about 

healing for fun ; and then they thought 

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OF A HERMIT 

Him a crank ; and then a mischief- 
maker ; and last of all an alien in the 
world. 

Is it not strange that only a man who 
has felt the lightning and who has felt 
the immortal moods fall from him, — 
all save the mood of sorrow, — is it not 
strange that this is the sort of man that 
loves the world, that really understands 
the world, and accepts the world ? 
And He can even love the people who 
think they are good ; and what must be 
more easy. He can also love the bold 
sinner ; and He alone can kiss without 
fear the shamed form of tired outraged 
bitterness. He can love all of it — He 
the One that bled so soon. The most 
terrible pang of all, pity — the flower of 
sorrow — that we who have tfi"e ever- 
lasting feelings dare not endure. He 
endured it. And pity for the jackal. 
It is easier, far easier, to pity a white 
sick child than a red monster of greed. 
127 



SOLILOQUIES 

He could pity us because we all feel 
so safe in the world. 

How we all enjoy the sense of secur- 
ity that it gives to know that everyone 
has the same feelings as oneself. We 
know all the kindly, loving feelings of 
our friends ; they are the same feelings 
as ours, because they are ours ; and we 
are all quite safe with one another. 
Sometimes, perhaps, in an ill hour, a 
mass of men who have had bad dreams 
in the night about bears and lions want 
to march to the seaside ; and another 
mass of men, feeling their interests lie 
in another direction, oppose them ; and 
they all feel just alike. The others 
may have dreamt of great eagles. All 
these proceed quite calmly to casting 
each hfs millions through the fire of 
Hell itself 

These moving coloured pictures of 
Human Madness make a ghastly show 
when they happen to come to pass ; 
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OF A HERMIT 

only we all learn from watching them 
what our feelings are and what they 
can do. They can tear our bodies to 
pieces en masse ; and instead of going 
out with swords and spears to judge 
the moods of God, we only talk to 
each other about the wickedness of 
other countries. 

Yes, there is something in the desire 
of Jesus to escape and to die. And to 
this desire, and to this longing, do the 
priest natures of the world come ; here 
and there out of all manner of holes in 
the rocks, out of all manner of minds, 
they move towards the annihilation of 
themselves. 

From whence comes the lightning 
that stings to death the feelings that 
live for ever ? So asks the young man 
void of understanding with the leer of 
an angler over the dark waters. Ah ! 
that is easier asked than answered. 
But it may be, — I am not sure, — but it 
I 129 



SOLILOQUIES 

may be that even the moods of God 
end somewhere ! Shall not the im- 
mortal feelings have an end somewhere 
in some men ? Or is it the beginning 
of a new heaven and a new earth that 
passeth man's understanding ? I do 
not know ; in this place even the 
priest must do what other little foolish 
children do ; he must go out into the 
garden by the big door. 

What I do know is, that there is 
something more godlike about the 
lightning that kills in a moment, than 
about all the feelings that live for 
ever. Sometimes I think that it is the 
glorious presence of utter absolute ex- 
tinction, of death — that is, real death — 
that gives the magic to the lightning. 

I wonder, do the moods of God tire 

of their manifold disguises in man ? 

Do they begin to find the eternal mo- 

'^n in clay bodies hard to bear ? Does 

He desire to die ? And did He choose 

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OF A HERMIT 

the man who called Him Father for 
His last home ? Did the everlasting 
moods that are God will a grave as 
well as a birthplace in man ? Did He 
at last desire His own end, and did He 
begin to die in Jesus ? Perhaps, who 
can say ? 

The moods may themselves want to 
turn aside and to sleep — never to rise 
again, never again to torment them- 
selves and the clay that they live in. 1 
do not know ; the exultation that the 
lightning vision brings into being can- 
not be explained in words ; it may 
be an end or it may be a beginning. 
To Jesus it certainly gave sometimes 
one and sometimes another of these 
thoughts. I think He longed for it 
to be a token, a promise of something 
more wonderful even, than the end of 
God. He longed for it to be a pro- 
mise of new life. It may have been 
such a promise, or it may have been a 
promise of death. One thing seems to 
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SOLILOQUIES 

be quite sure, and that is that the vision 
has more in it than the simple death or 
life of one creature. Everyone feels 
that the body and the life of Jesus were 
a battleground more terrible than that ; 
and that the happenings in Him sur- 
passed anything that has ever before 
happened in man. If the everlasting 
moods did indeed find in Him a willing 
sacrifice, an altar where they could be 
quite burnt out, no wonder that His 
Ways were very little understood by 
the people. 

Why Jesus is a figure of such in- 
tensely human interest to mankind is 
because He stands always at the parting 
of the ways. In Him end, it may be, 
the everlasting moods ; in Him, it may 
be, God Himself ends ; or the sudden 
lightning of a supreme joy begins. And 
His kind of life was ever the opposite 
of man's doings and sayings. He lived 
in order to destroy man's immortal 
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OF A HERMIT 

ways, and He stabbed everywhere, 
wherever He saw human greed ever- 
lasting. 

If anyone deserved a blessing upon 
earth, it was in His eyes the sinner. 
He saw that sin ends quicker and 
changes quicker than righteousness ; and 
the righteousness of the leaders of the 
people was to Him the most lasting 
and the most intolerable ugliness that 
He saw anywhere. 

Everyone knows how His words have 
been twisted and turned exactly and 
completely inside out. Of course they 
have ; men do not give up their greed 
for nothing ; and they soon began to 
think that His Heaven was a shadow 
in the water, a large shadow of that 
hunk of meat that they with their dog- 
like teeth held in their half-opened 
mouths. And some amongst men, the 
good saints and hermits, the good 
Bishops of the flock, let their hunk of 
meat drop for the shadow, like the dog 
133 



SOLILOQUIES 

in the fable ; and then there was no 
help for it. They had to believe in 
Heaven, and so they waved the fairy 
wand of immortality over the place 
where their hunk of meat sank ; and 
they present to us — these very good 
ones — rather an odd, and not, I fear, 
very noble picture ; for while they pre- 
tend to believe in the shadow of another 
life, all the time they are digging their 
snouts in the mud (they have now 
changed to swine), and searching for 
their lost meat as the money-lenders in 
that old French book searched for rusty 
nails. They are not altogether beautiful 
objects for our contemplation here upon 
earth. We prefer the more honest 
sinners. Avoid the good ones, little 
girls and boys of the earth, and go and 
dance with those that take and eat 
honestly the lion's share. We know 
that Lion ; there is something honest 
and open about him ; the immortal 
laughters surround him as he gambols 
134 



OF A HERMIT 

and frolics in new-mown hay. High 
up to his godlike mouth he lifts the 
holy bottle of human life. He drinks. 
His life is not here nor there ; he lives 
truly and entirely himself in every 
moment. 

There is no cry in his heart, " What 
can I do to be saved ? " He is content ; 
the earth is good enough for him. He 
spends his treasure ; he does not hide it, 
as a certain country did their treasure in 
a fortress, until the next war ; he spends 
it all, and when the next war comes, he 
dies ; that is the end of the lion. 

Between the lion of life and Jesus, 
that sad Stranger, there are innumer- 
able moving pictures of little men and 
women. Children of the earth, I 
would have you go to the sad Stranger 
when the moods of the Father get their 
claws full of your blood. In one way 
this Stranger is like the lion ; He is 
not afraid of the Father. Go to Him ; 
135 



SOLILOQUIES 

He will give to you what no other man 
has ever dared to give ; He will give 
you Himself. 

Remember before you take Him 
what He has done. Remember His 
crime ; remember His sin ; remember 
that He has in a moment put an end 
to the world. No wonder that when 
the animal instinct of the herd became 
awake, when they began to understand 
what He was doing, that they killed 
Him and freed Barabbas. " To the 
cross with Him ! '' they cried out, " He 
threatens our very Jehovah,*' which was 
only too true. And he did more than 
threaten ; He slew. He broke in upon 
God with a fierce fire, a fire more fierce 
than God's when He breaks in upon 
men. He knows, this Son of Man, 
that a moment of destruction is better 
than many years of creating ; for the 
soul of a great work of art feels more 
of its life when the shells are bursting 
upon it than when the sober eyes of 
136 



OF A HERMIT 

good sightseers peer and blink about it 
and the beads of the prayers rattle in its 
long nave. 

Then the destroyer meets the creator 
in the great awakening ; these two 
heroic ones hold hands at last ; their 
souls meet and end. Nothing, not even 
the moods of God, can find its true soul 
until it is destroyed ; and even the lion 
of laughter that drinks for ever the cup 
of earth's richest wine becomes a little 
fat clown with pink cheeks, like a 
dancer in a show, when the two terrible 
ones meet, the creator and the destroyer. 



When we see the work that Jesus has 
done, when we see the great white 
throne rent and torn and lying like any 
other broken chair at our feet, when 
we see the temple whereon the creative 
mind a little overstepped its mark in 
decoration nothing but scarred walls, 
when we see all this as we do see it, 
137 



SOLILOQUIES 

we know that a soul has felt its life 
burn, and its death cool it for ever. 

This is what we come to in His life. 
He seemingly had no fear of the great, 
the powerful, the almighty ; the im- 
mense terrible coils of the immortal 
snake had no terrors for Him. The 
moods fierce and utterly blind stayed 
their fatalistic dancing in Him ; He 
died to break the power of God. And 
now the moods creep silently in the 
earth ; they cannot sting as they used 
to ; they can live immortal as they 
used to live in man ; but here lies the 
difference — they have been conquered. 

Many an artist no doubt looks with 
sorrow at the fall of the great wild 
monster moods, the Old Testament of 
man's history, the blind fierce hidden 
history of his beginning ; the old Crea- 
tor creating out of the bottom of the 
sea and upwards, through all times, 
through all minds. How wildly He 
138 



OF A HERMIT 

created, and with what wasteful profu- 
sion, we all know. We all know the 
blindness of Him that used to sit on 
High, and now it may be that He of 
His own free will has entered into the 
Son of Man in order to end His long 
reign ; perhaps He has become tired of 
Himself, and His tiredness at some time 
or another we all feel. 

And what do any of us know about 
ending and beginning ? I see that it 
may have happened like that ; I see a 
difference in the world since He lived ; 
I even think I see the moods themselves 
begin to take a new turn, consoling, 
liberating, and even becoming free men. 
I see in the new order, the Babe of 
Joy, that takes the place of the terrible 
Majesty of the past ; I see the awful 
Majesty of the Creator come into our 
own Grange mead, and lie down amidst 
a joyous crowd of buttercups and red 
clover, dimly conscious of a new be- 
ginning, and of the laughter of the 
139 



SOLILOQUIES 

maidens in the village near by. There 
is, I may tell you, a higher art in the 
Babe of Joy than in all the deep wild 
cruelty of the old order ; and after all is 
said, there was too much of a bully's 
rod and not enough of a child's laughter 
in those old days. And surely no one 
is better pleased than God Himself to 
come up and find that His terrible 
moods have not destroyed all the Babe- 
like laughter upon earth. 

We can bless life when we see that 
the moods have lost their grip upon the 
mind ; we can bless life when we see 
man's immortality end and true joy 
begin ; we can bless life when we see 
daisies and buttercups grow between 
the walls of our best works of art, that 
the shells have let a little light into. 
Do you remember He talked about 
destroying the temple and building it 
in three days — the Golden temple of 
Solomon, filled with the labour of a 
140 



OF A HERMIT 

million artists ? He came like a shell 
into that old great habitation of fierce 
Godhead — that old temple built up in 
the mind of man, filled with the work 
of countless builders ; and everywhere, 
where His heart's blood fell, the temple 
was destroyed. What cared He for 
the decorations round the base of the 
columns ? What cared He for here a 
pomegranate and there a pomegranate 
at the hem of the garment ? What 
cared He for the golden rods and 
brackets ? 

A sigh of great content comes up 
from our Grange mead, where God lies 
amongst buttercups and listens to the 
naughty laughter of little village boys ; 
I cannot see the least willingness on 
His part to leave the scent of the May 
clover, in order to go and look at old 
churches ; but I do notice that He turns 
a little on one side to watch a young 
man and maid take the path that leads 
141 



SOLILOQUIES 

to the tavern ; and He looks at them 
as though they really were His children. 
They loiter a little by the gate, and He 
lies back again with His white hands 
gently resting upon the warm red 
clover. 

In the Old Testament, the old Order, 
the moods were hemmed in and not 
allowed to live a natural life in the free 
air ; they were hemmed in until they 
gathered strength to burst ; they were 
like a terrible lake of black waters that 
filled and filled from beneath, until it at 
last burst all doors ; the old story of 
the flood may have had a meaning of 
this kind. 

The hatred and malice, the ungovern- 
able rage of man, — the rage of getting 
more than his neighbour, — that no 
painted lying civilization can assuage ; 
the rage of a suppressed country, being 
denied a proper proportion of the earth's 
surface ; the rage of another country 
that the first should want any more ; 
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OF A HERMIT 

the immortal greed shut up under the 
supposed tameness of man ; all the black 
terrible moods have a way of bursting 
their chains at times ; of getting loose 
with a sound and a horrible cry of 
bloody rage. The old prophets de- 
lighted in it ; they wallowed up to their 
necks in the black waters and enjoyed 
it. The people did not listen ; do the 
people ever listen until it is too late ? 
And then their mangled bodies strew 
the earth, in the day when the black 
waters rush out with a horrible sound, 
and over all the Earth there is black 
smoke and death and an evil stench. 

Jesus saw the danger of all ill con- 
tent being saved up and prepared in 
man's mind, and He advised men to 
act naturally like the flowers ; and to 
hate and to love like children, forget- 
ting everyone his quarrel when the 
night comes. He turned the sword 
with wise justice into the heart of Him 
that created it. 

143 



SOLILOQUIES 

But, alas, the moods are a many- 
headed monster, and to-day the black 
waters have burst out again amongst 
men. He could only give to men the 
charm that can slay them. I want to 
be able to bless all life truly and whole- 
heartedly as He blessed it ; I want to 
be able to bless the sinner as well as 
the victim of sin ; I want, as every good 
priest should want, to be glad when I 
see any sign of Joy anywhere in the 
earth. 

I want to bless all the moods of God, 
for these too, immortal as they are, will 
one day desire to end. 

I do not say wicked things when I 
speak of God coming down from His 
great white Throne of Majesty and 
Power, and resting in our mead beside 
the dairy cows, who look at Him with 
their quiet soft eyes ; I mean no harm. 
To those who prefer to keep Him as 
He once was in order to preserve a 
144 



OF A HERMIT 

more artistic effect, I have nothing to 
say ; no doubt they know best ; but I 
prefer to think of Him as watching 
with a true Father's love the Babe of 
Joy that will one day grow up out of 
His old creation — The Babe of Joy 
that has taught Him already that a 
child's laughter is of more value than 
everlasting life. 

This is a day of new Values ; the old 
days of greed, of getting and keeping, 
will end ; the old days of holding one's 
self, of hugging one's self, of living 
one's self, will end. What a time it 
was when man's whole hope of happi- 
ness was to live for ever ; to always go 
on helping the same body out of the 
same dish for ever and ever ; and to 
that happiness the immortal moods have 
trained the clay-pots. They have put 
into us their immortal feelings so 
strong, that even now as I write, I want 
to go on living for another day, till 
K 145 



SOLILOQUIES 

to-morrow. And this is what we all 
say — " till to-morrow." I cannot 
welcome extinction, because for millions 
of years the immortal feelings have 
been desiring more and more hours, 
more and more to-morrows. 

When I think of Jesus, the burden 
falls. I do not think of extinction. I 
think of the moment ; I think of how 
He, in one life, ended the stagnation of 
immortality. I long to live a moment 
in Him unfettered and free. Have I 
explained myself enough now ? Or 
have I left only a mist about the eyes 
and a madness in the heart ? I can as- 
sure you now, if you have not guessed 
it before, little and great brethren, that 
instead of meaning no harm, I mean a 
great deal of harm. Have we not had 
nearly enough of the everlasting feuds, 
of the everlasting jealousy of the moods 
of God ; would it not be better to use 
our own minds and to reason away 
146 



OF A HERMIT 

from these things ? Which is better, I 
wonder, to lie for a moment where all 
our finest buttercups grow, or to go on 
with our greed and getting and hating 
for ever ? If we took His road, and 
gave up our eternal occupations, our 
everlasting work, our immortal getting ; 
and in a moment spent that which we 
did not gather, in a moment of Joy — a 
moment that cannot be lost because it 
is true Joy — would it not be better to 
spend ourselves for it, for such a 
moment ? But, dear brothers, the 
pleasure of our lives is in hating. We 
know a little about the merry goblins 
in the bottom of our hearts ; we don't 
want to cast them out in a hurry. The 
moods are with us ; we play on their 
side when we amuse ourselves with our 
little frolics. 

It is most easy to call everything 
degeneration that is not found in the 
heart of a cruel man. It is most easy 
H7 



SOLILOQUIES 

to call everything madness that is out- 
side the pompous throned power of 
man's immortal belief. It is really 
quite easy to call everything mystic 
stupidity, because it just happens to be 
not exactly our way of treating dancing 
girls in the night. I do not dispute 
with this ; I do not want to slay any 
child's joy ; neither did He. He came 
to free the world and to give Joy ; not 
afterwards, — He knew no afterwards, — 
but now. I know my hatred of others ; 
I know my greed for myself; and I 
know, my masters, that we all have the 
same feelings ; I want to break up these 
feelings and take hold of the new Joy. 

When we feel the gladness of our 
greed, when we feel we have managed 
well a good business matter after the 
manner of the world, when we feel we 
have done something very well indeed, 
perhaps robbed a few million homes of 
their halfpence, how the greed goblins, 
old as God Himself, cringe and lick and 
148 



OF A HERMIT 

fawn upon us ; for have we not been 
carrying on their game a little further ? 
" And a very good game too," you will 
say. Well, is it ? 

I seem to hear at this moment the 
clamour of something not altogether 
good ; I see torn bodies, broken, buried 
in blood, that were a year ago very 
thoughtless young men ; and I see the 
evil eye of our greed blinking and cruel ; 
you have not got to go far from where 
I write to see its work. Your little 
happy ways, your little business ways, 
your little rather long immortal ways, 
are a cause of all this, my brothers. 
Without the feelings that you guard so 
jealously from madness (why are you 
all so afraid of madness ?) this could 
not have happened. Without the feel- 
ings you enjoy, the shocking face of a 
woman I once saw in an alley of a great 
town could never have had written upon 
it agony unquenchable, agony eternal, 
149 



SOLILOQUIES 

The moods of God have caused all this ; 
they are causing it still. 

And our feelings that go on for ever, 
— that we enjoy so much, — are they 
worth all this terror and horror and 
blood ; do they not after all lick up 
with their evil tongues all the waters 
of real joy out of our liVes ; do they 
not take in the cruel grip of their 
eternal desires all our best children ? 



Look at the boldness of Jesus ; He 
too was terrible, like a burning of the 
firmament amongst the worlds ; think 
of His courage, this lion in the desert ; 
the disputes He had with the lawyers 
were nothing ; what He really did was 
to stand in the way of the eternal 
moods. He bade them get out of His 
way ; He would have a New Heaven 
and a New Earth ; He would have the 
feelings of a flower ; childlike laughter, 
like one of these little ones, to whom 
150 



OF A HERMIT 

every moment is an eternity and whose 
every hour is a life everlasting. 

He stood alone to stem the torrent 
of greed, the greed of living for ever. 
"He that saveth his soul shall lose it." 
And instead of the greed of living, He 
built up out of the fire of His heart 
the joy of life. 

Consider the day of joy that He 
created for us ; how freely and light- 
heartedly we can now cull the flowers 
after He has shown us the way. The 
deep hidden waters of the inner dark- 
ness that lived underground like a 
great earth monster, he brought out 
into the sun. And how like snails the 
eternal feelings creep and creep in our 
lives ; how they force us to hide, and 
to plan and to corrupt ; how they force 
us to pass the day in gloom, because 
we are thinking of the morrow, because 
of the year that is to come. " Take 
no thought for the morrow." I cannot 
help seeing almost a vision, as I write 
151 



SOLILOQUIES 

of the wonder that He did. And when 
I think of the fears ; the heavy long- 
ings for good things ; our eternal look- 
ing forward ; our cringing to time ; 
our continual longing for future gain ; 
when I think how oppressed we all 
are, how filled to the brim with the 
feelings that want to go on for ever ; 
I do not know how I can thank Him 
enough, that opened a way for our 
freedom. 

I cannot think how anyone can re- 
gard immortality as anything else but 
an endless and sad ordeal of the same 
feelings ; they go on and on, and 
always serve us the same. They bring 
simple peasants and quiet homely 
gentlemen in line as fodder for the 
cannon ; they let off the poisonous 
gas ; they drop the bombs in the 
night ; our little best feelings, yours 
and mine, are doing it. Our feelings 
do all this now ; and in the past they 
152 



OF A HERMIT 

pinned Him to the Cross. But not 
before He had sown His life's blood in 
the earth ; not before His death-cry 
for Freedom had gone out and been 
heard. 

No doubt the great Artists, the 
happy portrayers of man's deeds and 
ways, will scream out with a great 
rage at the thought of their old 
occupation being gone. What will 
happen to bloody rage and blind lust 
that gave them all such good copy 
for their long nails ? For was it not 
ever the moods and the feelings of 
man's deep black nature that gave the 
good workers in their creative art the 
chance to get human-kind on the point 
of their pen ? 

Well, they will have to change, that 
is all. Jesus did not consider their love 
of God and His ways when He stood 
alone in all the earth to face and 
destroy the moods. The artists that 
153 



SOLILOQUIES OF A HERMIT 

have for so long lived like vultures 
upon the broken flesh and rotten 
carcass of human despair must now 
learn a new trade ; they must try to 
rest awhile in our Grange mead beside 
the dairy cows, and write poems, until 
a little of the New Heaven and the 
New Earth enter into them. 

And meanwhile let them bless the 
maiden and the young man that again 
loiter through the mead, for it is now 
evening, on their way home from the 
tavern ; and let them bless the naughty 
child that lingered for one more solitary 
dance alone on the Green after all the 
others had gone. 



THE END 



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Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 022 351 7 



